Mary Ryan Brown knew exactly where she wanted to sit at the Crescent City Grill, a Hattiesburg, Mississippi, eatery owned by family friend and restaurateur Robert St. John.

Brown, a rising stand-up comic and well-followed social media content creator, chose a booth near the entrance of the restaurant without hesitation.

"My grandmother and grandfather ate here every day, and this is where they would sit," Brown said. "My grandmother would order the same thing: lump crab meat, five bleu cheese-stuffed olives and eight grapes."

While the sentiment of eating in the same spot where beloved grandparents shared a meal every day has Brown waxing somewhat poetically, she never misses the opportunity to land a punchline, even when it comes to her grandmother, the late Frances Karnes, who spent her life making the world a better place through education advocacy.

"But then they would steal our French fries and eat our ice cream when we weren't looking," Brown said.

Welcome to the world of Mary Ryan Brown, a former high school English teacher turned stand-up comic whose character reels are making waves on social media. One of her best-known characters is "Southern Mom," a blend of parody and self-reflection on the ubiquity of mothers in the South.

Brown brings her "Be Blessed Tour" to the OWA Theater in Foley on Friday, April 24. Tickets to the 7:30 p.m. performance start at $34 and are available for purchase at www.maryryanbrown.com.

Although it's her first performance on the Alabama Gulf Coast, Brown has fond memories of vacationing in Lower Alabama.

"I have so many memories of Orange Beach and Gulf Shores," she said.

"One time, when I was still an only child, I got three hermit crabs on vacation. One of my favorite memories was going to Alvin's Island and getting a hair wrap. But they charged you by the inch, and I had long hair, so my dad ordered a book on how to do it, and he came home and became the hair-wrap guy."

Brown also makes popular reels and videos that parody cities in the South, including her native Hattiesburg, as well as Ocean Springs, Mississippi, and Orange Beach.

"There are always people who don't understand that it's satire and parody, but the people who do know I'm having fun with it. The angle was the Southern Mom who is used to 30 A (Florida) and goes to Orange Beach. She thinks that she's above it, but she ends up having a great time. I actually went to Orange Beach this summer, and it was lovely. I went on the Pink Boat Dolphin Cruise. Tabby and Captain Bart (Bowers) are the loveliest people. They are the kindest people, and they love those dolphins. They gravitate to Tabby and Bart."

A FAMILY AFFAIR
Brown grew up in Hattiesburg as the oldest of five children. She said she grew up watching "SNL," "Talladega Nights" and whatever her parents would allow.

"My parents are great," she said in between sips of her black coffee. "Their rule was as long as it was funny, they would let me watch it."

The mother of 4-year-old Meadow, the subject of one of her "greatest hits" jokes, Brown considers her family her greatest blessing in life. Her husband, Andrew, who plays "Greg" in her videos, travels with her on the road.

"He sells insurance for a living, so he says he really believes in me as a product," she quipped. "And he really does, but he's also very honest with me, which is great. The support has always been on par with the work I'm putting in. He loves the world of comedy. He's funny, as well."

And if Andrew is not available to travel, Brown's parents make the trek.
"I am so blessed that I have them," she said. "My parents are the best people ever, and they are so supportive. My litmus test for whether something I'm doing is funny is whether Andrew and my mom find it funny. I'm always sending them videos and ideas. My mom is the original Southern mom, and I like to have a male perspective, as well. Andrew has his pulse on online culture. I prefer to travel with someone in my family. I once had my brother travel with me to Nashville. And whoever is not traveling with me is watching Meadow. Meadow has to be supervised, and I have to be supervised, I suppose."

Brown lost one of her biggest fans in the summer of 2025 when the aforementioned Frances Karnes passed away at 87. Karnes, a published author and scholar, was a well-known figure in the Hattiesburg community and world of academia at the University of Southern Mississippi. Karnes founded the Center for Gifted Studies at Southern Miss and led its growth for two decades. In 1999, the university honored her by renaming it the Frances A. Karnes Center for Gifted Studies.

"One of the things my grandmother was so great at doing, she made a career out of it, was finding the strengths and talents and gifts in others and encouraging them to pursue those talents, and she did it rather aggressively," Brown said. "She started in special education and moved to gifted education. She was able to put so many people on a path toward excellence. She did that with me. She knew I loved writing, and she would bring me writers' and publishers' magazines and show me which ones were accepting submissions. She would bring me children's books about the stock market. She was a role model for me. People tell me I'm brave for doing comedy, but I think about her and my grandfather moving to Africa with two small children and starting a college for educators, that's brave; what I'm doing is delusional."

ON THE ROAD AGAIN
Brown is a student of life and comedy, finding the perfect mix to fuel her content creation and stand-up act. She once dissected an entire Dave Chappelle stand-up special with a notepad to perfect the rhythm and timing of stand-up comedy. Fresh off the "Southern Nights Tour" with Southern humorist Landon Bryant, A.K.A. "Landon Talks" on social media, the "Be Blessed Tour" has seen her sell out shows, including a special performance at the Grammy Museum in Cleveland, Mississippi.

"I'm doing an all-new hour of material on this tour," she said. "There is a greatest hits joke in there as well."

One of her favorite parts of touring, Brown said, is meeting and interacting with people.

"I love meeting people and hearing people's stories," she said. "I've had a lot of meaningful connections with people who tell me they are going through a hard time and that my comedy helped them, and that is so crazy to me. I always told myself when I was teaching that if I could do for one student what my high school English teacher did for me, which was give me a voice, and I feel the same way about comedy. If I can do for one person what Dave Chappelle and Hannibal Buress did for me at my lowest point, it's so rewarding. It's the best part of the job."