Beyond being lifelong friends who share the same surname but have no relation, Lindsay and Jillian Russell struck a new kind of chemistry this year as the Revelstoke Legion's new trivia hosts.
"We've always been separated from each other in life because we're too loud together," joked Jillian, who grew up with Lindsay as a neighbour and Revelstoke Secondary School bestie.
Now, with Lindsay married with two sons and co-running United Flooring, and Jillian busy as a teacher at Columbia Park Elementary School, the two friends are making noise once again on Wednesday nights at the Royal Legion's Branch 46.
It started back in February, when local showman and city councillor Lee Devlin stepped back from running the city's premier trivia show, and the Legion's management needed to quickly find someone else to take the helm.
"They didn't know where to go from Lee resigning, and we sort of came up in the conversation," Lindsay recalled, noting her and Jillian's long ties with Legion chairman Mark McKee. "We've known Mark since we were kids."
"We still don't know why we were chosen either, but it's worked out quite well," quipped Jillian, who in high school was a member of the 'Ugly Old Creeps' trivia team 鈥� a name that "came from nowhere but was just a really lame inside joke."
Devlin ran trivia solo, but the two friends knew that if one of them was going to lead trivia, they'd have to do it together. While Lindsay is savvy with music lyrics and film quotes, for example, she credits Jillian with being better at speaking to crowds. As an educator, Jillian also generates a lot of her trivia material from curiosity in her classroom.
"We often preface that to the crowd 鈥� 'a five-year-old came up with this,'" she said.
In a 30-question, written-on-paper format, each trivia session features sport, history, pop culture and music categories, with Lindsay calling odd-number questions and Jillian calling even. The music trivia finale has the highest stakes for teams, letting them hear each tune only once, for just 15 seconds.
"The music round is like a make-or-break moment," Lindsay said.
Evenings often run close to three hours, and the two friends quickly "learned the hard way" to limit answers to one word each. Part of what they love the most each week, however, is the unpredictability of how easy or challenging their questions actually are.
"It's really fun for us to be like, 'that's a hard one,' and then have our minds absolutely blown when people get it," Jillian said.
"We don't really tell people what's going to happen," Lindsay added.
Better yet, "we don't even tell each other," Jillian admitted.
A bonus point goes to teams that invent creative names, using alluring alliteration or clever plays on words. The ultimate prize for the trivia champions includes bragging rights, a pitcher of beer and a week with the faux-gold trophy, which to this day has Lindsay's former trivia team name, 'Three Dog Night,' written on it. Though the 'Chatty Cathies' usually talk up too much of a storm to perform well on their quiz sheet, they remain one of the more memorable teams.
A bonus? Spelling doesn't have to be correct to score answers!
Despite largely keeping things the way Devlin ran them, Lindsay and Jillian did tweak one thing: Moving the microphone table from behind the blue pillar that blocked participants' view, up onto the stage where everyone can see.
"We've gotten so much more engagement from the crowd from up there," Jillian reflected.
One way the pair has continued to honour their quizmaster predecessor is by carrying on Devlin's dramatic reading component. They pass a paper with song lyrics to a random audience member and, as they recite the bars from onstage, other participants try to fill in the next lyrics.
"It's cool to see people getting up there be brave," said Lindsay, who also noted the weekly diversity of people ages 20 to 60 who stop by for trivia.
"There are a lot of young people here, which has been amazing to see," she continued. "It's really sweet how many people see us out and about and say, 'I'm going to come!'"
"I love when people from out of town come and integrate with us," Jillian added.
For Lindsay, the hardest part of hosting trivia is simply not being able to join the crowd and guess the questions herself.
"Overall, my favourite thing is calling people out for Googling," she said, describing participants who've pretended to pay their rent or even messaged her mid-game for answers.
For Jillian, a highlight is watching people come in late and deliver rapid-fire answers as she quickly repeats the questions just once for them.
When the Revelstoke Legion shuttered without notice in early 2024, halting all staple community events for several months, Lindsay and Jillian remember representatives from Royal Legion branches in other communities flocking in to help get the establishment back on its feet. In the year since its reopening, its new trivia hosts said this Legion and its management have done well adapting to changing circumstances. By last March, membership had skyrocketed from a couple of dozen people to 170.
"We really don't want the Legion to close," Jillian affirmed. "If we can create a space where veteran family members and community members can meet, that's our goal."
"Spending time together is just a bonus," Lindsay added.
And while they said the Legion started off decades ago as a more exclusive club, Lindsay and Jillian emphasized it's since grown into a welcoming place that doesn't even require a membership for people to participate in trivia and other events.
"We don't want people to be scared to come to the door and check it out," Lindsay said.
Jillian added that while participants often thank her and Lindsay for a fun night, the credit should really go back to them.
"You made it fun, buddy!" she said.
Trivia at the Revelstoke Legion is free to attend and starts at 7 p.m. every Wednesday.
