August Cover Lisa Marie Riley from @OneFunnyLisaMarie

August Cover Lisa Marie Riley of @OneFunnyLisaMarie on healing, humor, food and family

I was sitting in my living room with my parents when I started writing this article. Like many native New York “Boomers,” they now live in an apartment in Florida 11 months of the year. They were both in a funky mood, probably because visiting me reminded them of how much great food they had given up to move south, so I decided to just do some work. I began my “research” – listening intently to Lisa Marie Riley’s roll on instagram – when I realized my parents were listening too, roaring with laughter. With every new video I put on, they laughed harder. Like many people who come to see her stand-up comedy shows on tour, they felt right at home with her thick New York accent and sarcastic humor.

Lisa Marie Riley, also known as @onefunnylisamarie on TikTok And Instagramlives on Staten Island with her 7-year-old son. She was born and raised in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, which is immediately apparent when you hear that signature Italian-American intonation. For fellow New Yorkers like myself, her content is relatable and hilarious. But those who aren’t from here find her just as funny!

Ask Lisa Marie if she’s a comedian and she’ll tell you no. She doesn’t write jokes, she doesn’t perfect her set, she often doesn’t even know what’s going to come out of her own mouth before she picks up the phone to film her often-viral videos. After nearly 20 years as a court stenographer, a job she loved, she never expected her career—or her life—to take the turn it has.

After learning her husband was seriously ill in 2019, Lisa Marie began posting humorous videos on social media to cope with the stress, a creative outlet mostly intended for the eyes of close family and friends. But her exuberant musings eventually caught the attention of many, many more people. She now has nearly 250,000 followers on Instagram and nearly half a million followers on TikTok.

Sadly, Lisa Marie’s husband passed away two years ago, leaving her to raise her son alone.

At first, I thought she and I would talk about how humor healed her grief. I imagined her story might inspire others dealing with such devastating loss (and I’m sure it does). But there’s a good reason funny people don’t like to be too serious, and Lisa Marie is no exception.

As we talked and I continued to watch (okay, binge-watch) her videos, I realized that for Lisa Marie, healing doesn’t require a sense of humor at all. For someone who is hilarious, even when she’s not trying to be, the humor just comes naturally. It’s as much a part of life as breathing. For Lisa Marie, healing comes from family, friends, and even food (she is Italian, after all!).

Her family—particularly her mother and sister—appear frequently in her videos. They cook a lot; she says that in her family, “we live to eat, not eat to live.” I suspect that whoever makes the honey chicken on Sundays at Bruzzese’s Salumeria in Staten Island and New Jersey has helped her more than any therapist ever could (#iykyk). She’s even toying with the idea of ​​writing a cookbook soon.

I sat down for a chat with Lisa Marie (while she was getting her gorgeous, glossy locks cut) to talk about parenthood, her family, her new career, and growing up in Brooklyn.

Tell us about starting @OneFunnyLisaMarie and how it has impacted your life.

I started in 2019, just before covid and I didn’t think about what would come of it. I just did it to laugh and joke with family. I wanted to forget what was happening in real life for five or ten minutes a day. I needed a healthy vice. I needed a place where I could go and forget my reality. Everyone there, for a minute or two, escapes their reality to laugh and joke. I mean, your problems are still there, but you’re able to escape for a little while. So it became a healthy vice for me. And then it became a thing.

Back then my page was about my husband, being a woman and parenting, but when he passed away, had to change it. So now I talk about my sister, hanging out, getting my hair done or just whatever is on my mind at the time.

Social media gave me a new life. It gave me a different career. It took my life in a different direction that I didn’t know I was going. And this is life. Life is life. Things happen, but you keep going. I don’t want to be depressing. I want to give people hope that there is new life. Life goes on. You just have to keep going.

I am grateful for this other life. It is a beautiful thing. I enjoy it and I love it. It is a beautiful thing to work and get paid for what you love. This is all new to me, but it is a beautiful thing when you can just fall into the right job, the right thing, something that is perfect for you. I am lucky to have that.

You seem so close to your family. Have they been an important source of strength for you?

Yes, they are wonderful. We are a very, very close family. But my source of strength and reason to keep going is my son. My son is everything; he is my whole life.

Does your son think you’re funny?

No, there is nothing about me that he finds funny!

Do you often joke with each other?

I play with him a lot, but I’m very strict with a lot of things. I don’t let it happen that we’re friends. So we joke and we laugh, but serious is serious and things have to be done. I raise him differently. One Funny Lisa Marie is someone who I am, and it’s become who I am, but we’re not a constant house of fooling around all day. Behavior, respect, those kinds of things are very important to me.

Sometimes in my posts I talk about camp or school or stuff like that, but I don’t want to make a joke out of it. I don’t want to be one of those people who makes fun of everything. I talk about the projects, I talk about crazy hat day, stuff like that. But for me school is important, so I don’t want to make a joke out of it.

And I don’t want his life to be all his own about the fact that his mother is a comedian on social media. I want to be his mother, and his mother works and she does what she does, and that’s it.

Is he ever in your videos?

No, there is no reason for it because people are cruel and nosy. Social media is the devil’s playground. When you put kids on there, you open them up to “there he is!” Why do they need to see him? I don’t think anyone needs to see him. I’m very overprotective. You hear so many stories. I don’t want him to have social media at all because to me there is no reason for it.

Go back to when I was a kid. This would have been unheard of, something like doing social media and letting people know what your life is, what you’re doing, what you’re doing. You know, it’s a new world. It really is a new world.

Do you feel like the personality you project online is different from the personality you project in real life?

Well, that’s really who I am. But I know when to be serious and when to be One Funny Lisa Marie. It became a job for me. But the reality is, I’m not always like that.

How do you come up with ideas for your videos?

I just pick up the phone and talk about anything and everything. I don’t think about what I’m doing. Nothing is set up. My phone is not set up, I don’t have any of the gadgets. I just pick up the phone and I talk. It’s just what happens.

Wow! That’s impressive. And what if you do stand-up comedy shows?

I just do it. I don’t have a set. I don’t have anything. I just go away and I talk. I just talk about whatever comes to mind at that moment.

I’m not a professional comedian. I became one through social media. They said they’d pay me, so I became one. Literally, someone called me ten times to do a show. I said, what are you talking about? I’m not a comedian. On the tenth call, they said, ‘you know we’re going to pay you, right?’ So I said, well, I guess I’m a comedian.

What do you like most about living in New York?

I grew up in Brooklyn. I loved everything about growing up in Brooklyn and I miss it dearly.

What are some things you enjoy doing with your son?

We don’t have to do much. We just hang out. He’s a kid that likes to play outside. We play outside all day. Just normal stuff. We’re not jet-setting and spending thousands of dollars a week. That’s not me. That’s not what we do. I don’t go with the flow. I do what I can do, and that’s it. We spend a lot of time with friends and my sister lives down the street. My mom lives downstairs, which means I sit in the driveway all day. Just like I grew up.

Lisa Marie Riley may not consider herself a comedian, but we know better. Get tickets to her ongoing “I’m Done With It” stand-up comedy tour at CoastalEntertainment.com/events and follow her on Instagram and TikTok at @OneFunnyLisaMarie.

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