How do you become a TV star? That’s easy, Jarrod Schulz jokes: “Buy somebody’s stuff.”
Few people have taken a less-expected course to fame than Jarrod and his long-time partner Brandi Passante, who went from running a second-hand store to being the kind of people who have trouble going to the supermarket without being stopped by fans wanting to snap a picture.
That’s thanks to “Storage Wars,” A&E’s persistently popular reality series about storage-locker auctions and the traders who populate them. And now, they have branched out into their own A&E series: “Brandi & Jarrod: Married to the Job,” which plays off the couple’s unmarried status despite 15 years together and two children.
The pair are still regulars on “Storage Wars,” where they play the bickering, slightly mismatched couple: Jarrod in T-shirts and shorts, Brandi in a nice dress. He’s bidding too much for someone else’s abandoned junk, she’s annoyed at his overspending.
Their own show is part “Duck Dynasty,” part “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.” It’s an amusing chronicle of the everyday life of Brandi, 34, and Jarrod, 38, and their kids Cameron and Payton in their Lake Forest home. But without footlong beards, Southern accents or camouflage wear to rely on, the show carries a heavy suburban flavor reminiscent of 1950s and ’60s sitcoms.
The production even pays homage to its forebears in the opening credits, which bear more than a passing resemblance to those from “The Donna Reed Show.”
But at the heart is a sharpness most of those older shows lacked: the constant, more-or-less good-natured sniping between the two. Jarrod is too careless in Brandi’s view; she’s too uptight in his. It’s the schtick they perfected for “Storage Wars” expanded to their own half-hour.
Of course, it’s not entirely schtick, as one quickly learns in conversation with the pair. It’s just how they interact. The banter flows nonstop, greasing what might otherwise be the frequent squeaks in their relationship.
“It makes our dysfunction seem a little less dysfunctional,” Jarrod says.
It also has provided them with the ability to ad-lib their lines for both of the shows. The situations might be under the control of the producers, but Brandi and Jarrod are winging it when it comes to what they say. They don’t even save up zingers they might use onscreen.
“I feel like that is something that would never work,” Brandi says. “You just have to let it come out naturally.”
Jarrod points out that for every good line they get off, there are dozens of lesser ones left out of the final edit. “We look like we’re really funny all the time,” he says.
But being funny a little of the time is enough – that combined with their telegenic personalities and a large portion of good luck.
Brandi and Jarrod met in 1999 when they were both working at a carpet-cleaning company in Tustin, where he was the manager of the sales office when she landed a job there. (Jarrod: “She was, like, chasing me down all the time.” Brandi: “Yeah, right.”)
Eventually, he moved on to the mortgage business until that collapsed in the mid-2000s and he was “becoming unemployed without any unemployment benefits. Finding a job wasn’t very easy.”
An aunt who managed a public storage facility turned him on to the storage auctions, and he and Brandi eventually opened the Now and Then second-hand store, now located in Orange.
At an auction in Harbor City, Jarrod met the producers of “Storage Wars” and they talked to him about the show they were planning. Eight months later, the producers contacted him about shooting him at the store. Brandi was working that day.
“They asked me, ‘Who’s the girl up front?’” Jarrod recalls. “‘Would she mind being on TV?’”
Four years later, the show is still going strong, and despite their attempts to live their lives the same way as they did pre-stardom, they have found themselves somewhat reluctant celebrities.
Their daily lives have seen “very dramatic changes” Jarrod says. “Our style of living has definitely gone up.”
That includes little perks they never imagined: “We’ll go to a restaurant and the chef will send us out something special,” he says.
“It’s a blessing and a curse,” Brandi adds. “Sometimes you just want to go to the grocery store and pick up some milk.”
It’s also a lot of work. “Storage Wars” already has aired 132 episodes, and during the 12 weeks their own show was simultaneously being filmed, they were in front of the cameras six days a week.
For a couple who didn’t set out to become stars – “Neither of us really aspired to be on TV,” Jarrod says – it’s a transformation that seems a bit of a fairy tale.
“My brother-in-law tells me, ‘I don’t even play the lottery,’” Jarrod says. “Because we already won it.”
Contact the writer: 714-796-7724 or mhewitt@ocregister.com or @WatcherofTV on Twitter
