Media personality Dr. Gina Loudon may have grown up in Missouri, but the firebrand conservative commentator who regularly appears on national television and radio says she will always call Alabama her “sweet home.”
Loudon, who got her talk radio and TV start in St. Louis, moved to Alabama to host the popular “Dr. Gina Show” on Birmingham’s WYDE where she said her broadcast career was “really born.”
“It really began happening for me in Alabama,” Loudon said in an interview with Yellowhammer News. “It wasn’t so much about me, but it was really about what my audience in Alabama taught me about myself, how they believed in me, and how they inspired me.”
Loudon arrived for her new job the day after tornadoes ravaged the area. She said the experience bonded her to Alabamians.
“I was put on air ’round the clock because we were the only radio signal that survived the tornado, and people were depending on us for food, medicine, and even company,” she said. “I didn’t know a single road, a single moray, or the difference between Alabama and Auburn. But I would learn.”
Loudon said she and her husband, former Missouri State Senator John Louden, had a conversation one evening at their home in Hoover and agreed they never wanted to leave Alabama.
“Our lives were complete,” she said. “We loved our work, our home, our friends, and our family was really flourishing in Alabama. We planned that night to stay forever.”
When John was recruited for a job in California, the couple initially said no before reconsidering whether God was calling them to serve in the state that Loudon said she felt was being destroyed by its government.
“We told ourselves it was a tour of duty, and looking back now, I can tell you that was a true description,” Loudon said. “California, in all her beauty, cost us greatly. Our children were changed, and we were attacked in ways that are darker than I can describe. But we fought the fight, alongside great patriots.”
Loudon, a 2018 Yellowhammer Woman of Impact, has gone on to host national TV shows and frequently appears on Sean Hannity’s radio show and networks such as Fox News, Fox Business, CSPAN, ABC and the BBC. She is the author of several books and her latest, “Mad Politics,” will be released in September and is now available for pre-order.
Loudon also serves on President Trump’s media advisory board and was a National Republican Convention delegate for Trump, as well as an official media surrogate and spokesperson for his campaign.
Her opinion columns have appeared on Townhall.com, Breitbart.com and FoxNews.com and she has been a featured speaker at the American Conservative Union’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
She holds a master’s degree from St. Louis University and a master’s degree and doctorate in human development from Fielding Graduate University.
The Loudons have five children, one of whom is an adopted child with Down syndrome. Loudon is an outspoken advocate for special needs children and chairs a non-profit foundation to help families who choose life or wish to adopt children with special needs.
“For some reason, people find it difficult to believe that we set out, and searched for 10 years, for a child with Down syndrome who we could adopt,” Loudon wrote in a recent FoxNews.com op-ed.
“Samuel was born to a Latino man and a Polish woman in a large public hospital in Florida. Today Samuel’s birth mom is one of my very best friends. She had attempted several times to abort him, and she says God intervened in miraculous ways … once when her car ran out of gas and another time when a train stalled across the highway,” Loudon wrote of her 12-year-old son’s birth story.
“We have been so blessed by adopting Samuel,” Loudon said in a touching St. Louis Post-Dispatch video produced when Samuel was a toddler. “There’s just no question that it has been, I would say, the hand of God in our family.”
Loudon returns to Alabama to host the inaugural Yellowhammer Women of Impact awards this evening, both as master of ceremonies, and as an honoree. Details and registration may be found here.
“Alabamians understand something that I can tell you with authority, most of the rest of the country don’t understand,” Loudon said. “They know secrets about life that make them wiser in many ways, than the ‘enlightened’ coasts or the ‘savvy states’ that love to look down their proverbial noses at the south. They taught me how to be a Woman of Impact.”
