On 'Whatever,' the Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and the Sexy

The intimate conversations about sex, baking, and beauty regimens started in Martha Stewart's office, over lunch.

Jennifer Koppelman Hutt, 37, the daughter of the chairman of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Charles Koppelman, remembers feeling as if she shouldn't be there. She was working as her father's assistant and was intent on behaving appropriately.

However, her lunch companion, Alexis Stewart, 41, the only child of lifestyle entrepreneur Martha Stewart, assured her it was okay.

"At first I thought, ‘You can eat lunch and you can sit in your mother's office because it's your mother.' But I think her point was not that I could because she was the boss's daughter, but I could because Martha wouldn't care," Ms. Hutt says.

Two years later, they're having the same kinds of conversations, only not in private. They are the co-hosts of the live radio talk show "Whatever with Alexis and Jennifer," which airs in the coveted 5 to 7 p.m. drive-time slot, Monday through Friday, on the Martha Stewart Living channel of the Sirius satellite radio network.

The title of the show sums up its contents: the women talk about "good things," but also bad, ugly, and sexual things. Ms. Stewart, who is single and has a boyfriend she refers to as "Guy," updates listeners on her fertility treatments (she is freezing her eggs). She has also described visiting a listener to the show "to see Savannah and shtup," having "text sex," and having sex with her eyes closed when she doesn't like the man.

Ms. Hutt, who is married with two children, once discussed her husband's "kinky sex" plan to tie her up. She has also described how she knows she's ovulating and reported the results of a pregnancy test (negative). A video blog she posted Monday shows her husband sticking his tongue in her ear.

Jennifer's father and Alexis's mother not only endorse the venture, they make unplanned calls to the show. Not that children and parents see eye to eye on everything.

Martha Stewart is "more fond of the informational sections. She gets all excited," her daughter says. "It's usually what I consider to be the most boring part of the show."

Ms. Hutt describes her parents in more effusive terms. "My dad's incredibly proud of both of us. He's very paternal with Alexis," she says. "And my mom is our biggest fan." As the daughters of the bosses, both were subject to skepticism. They say that many people at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia didn't think the show would last two weeks.

But with more than 365 shows under their belts and a growing base of listeners —who express their affection on the bulletin boards and blogs the women maintain on the show's Web site, www.whateverradio.com — these two are holding their own.

And they're also bringing a new element to the Martha Stewart lifestyle: permission to be less than perfect. It's well timed given Martha Stewart's public beating in recent years.

"What we do on the show is make everything okay. You have Alexis, this beautiful, single girl who is miserable 80% of the time. Which means being beautiful and skinny and wealthy doesn't mean a thing," Ms. Hutt says. "And I'm a mom, but I'm nuts and anxious and have to be regular."

"People like hearing that you're normal," Ms. Stewart interjects. "People like listening to us because it's like listening to their girlfriends who say what they would say but they wouldn't say it out loud because they'd get in trouble."

Longtime fans of Martha Stewart seem to appreciate the Whatever girls. After three consecutive days of appearances on the "Martha Stewart Show" earlier this month, they received dozens of calls from new listeners, who said they'd seen them on television and subscribed to Sirius just to hear them (the service is $12.95 a month). The show has been on the Martha Stewart Living Radio channel since October, 24, 2005, about a month before the channel officially launched.

"I think people are surprised that it's on the channel that it's on but I think it complements the channel because it speaks to a whole different side of living. It's a little more gritty," Ms. Hutt says.

The apple doesn't fall so far from the tree. Ms. Stewart's contributions help the show sound like Martha. Last week hundreds of callers made suggestions for what to name Martha's new donkeys. On Friday Alexis announced that Martha had named them Rufus and Clive. On Monday, she posted on her blog photographs of the donkeys at her mom's home in Bedford, N.Y. as well as photos of the Oreo-like cookies she baked over the weekend in her downtown triplex.

The hosts say their lives are not glamorous, and indeed, they don't look glamorous when they're doing their show. They sit in a small studio with big black earphones on. Ms. Stewart props her brown suede cowboy boots on the counter. Ms. Hutt rests her feet, in black patent leather wedges, on a chair. They face screens on which they check their e-mail and the log of callers, who are male, female, gay, and straight, and from all over the country. On most days, the producer and assistant who are also in the studio contribute commentary.

To the extent the show is planned, it happens on the floor in the hallway outside the studio, about an hour and a half before they go on the air. Both women have notebooks where they jot ideas down. On the day this reporter is observing, Ms. Hutt has the April issues of Oprah and Women's Health magazines. Ms. Stewart has a clear plastic folder of newspaper clippings.

In between them sits a bag of trail mix Ms. Hutt purchased at Duane Reade. "We bring our own stuff," Ms. Hutt said.

"We used to find this to be annoying. Then we got to feel like it was charming and we were used to it and now we're back to really hating it," Ms. Stewart said.

Just as Ms. Stewart finishes this thought, a Sirius executive passes by with a tour group. "These are the hosts of ‘Whatever,' which is one of the most popular shows on Martha's channel," the executive says.

"No, I'm sorry…" Ms. Stewart responds.

"The most popular," Ms. Hutt adds.

"Yeah, it is, and you've got the time slot to prove it," the executive replies. (Sirius does not maintain ratings for its more than 130 channels; it says it has 6 million subscribers.)

This is the kind of interruption that makes working in a hallway difficult. The two have a policy of not talking to each other except when they're in the office and on the show, but they say they have personal and business issues to discuss that require privacy.

In their public personas, however, they are candid. Their Web site has a section describing their positions on "weed," "former ‘Whatever' employees," and "V-necks vs. Turtlenecks." (Recent studies have found a "V-neck" reduces the risk of HIV transmission in Africa.)

The women also lightly engage in topics of the day, such as Alec Baldwin's voice message to his daughter; Don Imus's firing (to which they objected), and traffic congestion in the city (both like Mayor Bloomberg's plan to charge Manhattan motorists a fee).

So what gives them the confidence to bare all on the air?

"I don't know. I'm shy," Ms. Stewart says.

Ms. Hutt says it's easy to talk on the radio because no one will see her blush. "I also think having the listeners and the interaction we've had with them has given me so much more confidence," Ms. Hutt says. "Even with all my crazies and anxiety, they still like me, which is wonderful."

The women's personalities could not be more different. Ms. Hutt is bubbly and smiles a lot. Ms. Stewart is quiet but a master of the witty comeback. Ms. Stewart is represented in the logo of the show as a devil, Ms. Hutt as an angel.

"The fact that we became friends is kind of …wild. Don't you think?" she asks Ms. Stewart.

"Well it's amazing that I stayed friends with you after I met all your friends. That was tenuous. … As long as I don't have to meet any of her friends ever again, I'll be fine," Ms. Stewart says.

When the two met, Ms. Stewart was appearing on "The Apprentice: Martha Stewart" and looking for a co-host for a radio show. She had graduated from Barnard College and run a hotel and two stores in the Hamptons. She'd also been a longtime listener to talk radio.

"I don't listen to music really as much as I immediately turn on talk radio all the time to keep me

company," Ms. Stewart says. "I don't know why, maybe because as a child I wasn't allowed to have a record player because my mother had weird ideas on what was an appropriate thing to spend money on or not."

Ms. Stewart was at her mother's side when her mother faced charges for insider trading (her husband at the time was one of the lawyers on her defense).

Ms. Hutt, 37, graduated from Tufts, studied voice, and became a lawyer — as did her two siblings — at the insistence of their father, but she never practiced (although she is licensed and in good standing). She became her father's assistant while he was filming "The Apprentice" because his secretary had left, and she was feeling restless as a stay-at-home mom with children in school.

Mr. Koppelman didn't just give his daughter a temporary job, though; he paved the way for the radio gig, negotiating the deal to launch a Martha Stewart channel on Sirius Satellite Radio. It was just one of the ways she has lifted the stock price of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia after Martha Stewart's trial and conviction for lying about a stock sale.

Neither woman had any experience on the radio until they launched "Whatever."

"My previous businesses don't relate to the show at all. They were much easier. You could bury yourself in a lot of mindlessness. My dream job would be to be maid," Ms. Stewart said.

Ms. Hutt is the more naturally loquacious, which is why Ms. Stewart thought she'd make a good co-host. "Since Jennifer won't shut up I thought she'd be perfect," Ms. Stewart says. "That's the sarcastic version of what actually happened,"

"Exactly," Ms. Hutt says. "Because it's too hard and painful for her to say it just worked. I'm mushy, she's not."

"Unless there's a bulldog walking by," Ms. Stewart says.

The show has an un-produced quality. Except for a "word of the day" feature, there are no recurring segments, and rarely any guests. One exception was the singer Mary Chapin Carpenter, who requested to go on the show because she was a fan.

Ms. Hutt considers Howard Stern, who also works at Sirius, something of an inspiration.

"But when we get dirty or racy or quote unquote shocking, it's not because we're looking to shock," Ms. Hutt says. "It's just part of life."

"Some people are shocked. On the other hand we have 78-year-old ladies who love our show and call and tell us all these really boring jokes. It's really sweet," Ms. Stewart says.

The pair say they have no big plans for the future except to keep doing the show.

"I think they might have given us this job because we're really incapable of doing anything except be ourselves," Ms. Stewart says.

Yet they are capable of caring what people think of them.

"Don't be mean," Ms. Stewart tells this reporter as the interview concludes.