Inside a friendship: Olivia Barker remembered

In March of 2008 I dragged entertainment reporter Olivia Barker into the domain of shaky-cam web video, thanks to a video series I'd pitched the higher ups called Celeb Style. I didn't know Olivia, and back then I was best known as a catch-all "producer" tasked with multimedia-ing this newspaper up.

So there we were, at a store in the West Village called Belly Dance Maternity, and I was prepping her for her taped intro.

"Welcome to Celeb Style! I'm USA TODAY's Olivia Barker and – "

"Great job!" said my twentysomething self. "Let's do it again." I was green. She was game. I asked her to repeat the line about eight more times. Olivia must have loathed this … thing … armed with a T-Mobile Sidekick (in fairness, please recall its great keyboard), but she delivered her lines again and again with gusto.

By the time we'd shot roughly 10 more Celeb Styles, Olivia and I began to dip out for coffee afterward, sometimes lunch. We eventually upgraded to drinks. I entertained her with verifiably frightening stories about dating in the Big Apple; she chortled over the day-to-day of sharing a rent-controlled, 400-square-foot apartment in Chelsea with her husband, Ben.

At the time, I wanted nothing more than to be a reporter at the paper, not a multi-use-whatever who occasionally grabbed a byline as a party reporter. I watched Olivia, mimicked her, swiped journo lingo from her over the first year of our friendship.

Eventually, I became a staff writer (under my wonderful editor), but I was still generally clueless – and mentor-less. In the shark-infested sea of media types in New York, few seemed willing to lend a helping hand. I'd be damned to admit I was flailing. But instead of asking Olivia to be my mentor, I basically just Saran-Wrapped myself to her. I tried to be her friend. Amazingly, she let me.

As friends, we became more invested in each other's lives. From Olivia, I learned how to be the kind of person I wanted to be, even at work. I could lose the formal-stiff-competitive act. I could be warm, adventurous and inclusive, like Olivia. Nowhere near the writer she was, I would read her stories, and learn. She would rehash Big Interviews with Big Actors and I'd mentally take notes. So that's how you ask the big question.

I also watched how carefully she protected her private life with Ben, which expanded to include their sweet baby boy, Henry, five years ago. Olivia had a work ethic unlike anyone I know, but her time with "my boys," as she called them, was prized above all. I started to think about whether or not my shredded personal life was important. I looked for more joy.

When I moved to Los Angeles three years ago, one of the people I missed the most was Olivia. But we talked by phone, for hours. We traded office gossip and howled over crumbs this strange world of interviewing celebrities offers up ("and then (unnamed actor) pulled TWELVE CHINESE HERBAL SUPPLEMENTS out of his GUCCI MAN-PURSE"). We shook digital fists at breaking news that cut into intensely anticipated dinner plans (see: Red Farm, Marea).

Olivia was diagnosed with Stage 3 triple-negative breast cancer almost a year after Henry was born. The news was core-shaking, but the options, she approached with resolution. Olivia would do whatever it took to live, to see Henry grow up, to stay on this earth.

Olivia would undergo a double mastectomy, endless chemo, radiation, experimental trials, rounds of hair loss, spinal surgery and weekly commutes to Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston from her home in Bethlehem, PA, where she and her boys had moved to be closer to Ben's job. She never complained.

But mostly, for the past four years, what we talked about was not cancer. We talked about the soup special at The Granola Factory, where she would stroll for lunch and glory in the good weather. A few weeks ago we laughed over how many light sabers the Star Wars-obsessed Henry had received for his birthday (so many she hid a stack in a closet).

Olivia particularly enjoyed updates about my tech-savvy 87-year-old grandmother, Sunny. "Sunny has the 6 Plus," I emailed Olivia the morning it came out. "She stood in line at 3 a.m. on the first day for it. Loves it. And texted me L'Shana Tova."

"I love this story," Olivia fired back. "I love her!"

What Olivia loved most about life was the whimsical, the telling, the tasty, the messy, the mundane. Henry coloring madly on the table as we ate eggs at The Waverly Inn. The running joke of her mailing a bottle of low calorie Skinny Girl wine to me, mistakenly sent to her (I begged her to keep it). The way a certain lifestyle celebrity once shouted across a crowded kitchen for her: "Hey, USA TODAY reporter!"

If life is a yarn, Olivia was the first to turn over the needlepoint to delight in its tangled underbelly.

I belly-laughed my way through the last seven years thanks to Olivia Taylor Barker. My work friend. My everything friend. I thank you. I love you.