The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is a national treasure, and the New Yorker behind every aspect of the parade is Amy Kule. NY1's Budd Mishkin filed the following One on 1 profile.

When Amy Kule is at a party and is asked about her job, she only has to answer once.

"'I’m the executive producer of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade,' and the room shuts down," she says. "And I believe it's the best job that anybody could have, but there's that sense of awe, because everybody's been a part of it in some way."

Kule joined Macy's in 1996 and climbed the corporate ladder, from East Coast events director to director of events at the Herald Square store, marketing vice president and, in 2010, executive producer of the parade and the Fourth of July fireworks show.

She is involved in every aspect of the parade. From inflating the balloons - "It's a beautiful thing," she says, a rite of passage for a New Yorker" - to the details of the national broadcast.

"We're happy to have a classic come back to the parade with Dino, the Sinclair dinosaur," Kule says.

There are constant reminders of just how many people are watching.

"Walter Burner sent me the best postcard ever, and it’s just, from Queens, 'Best Thanksgiving Day Parade I have ever seen!'" Kule says.

Kule's office is filled with reminders of her personal connection to the parade.

"This was the Charlie Brown balloon from 2002, and this was the very first balloon that I worked on from start to finish," she says.
There is also a pervasive sense of the parade's history.

"This is a script, actually, from the 40th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and to date, we do the parade in exactly the same way," Kule says. "I keep it around as a reminder that this parade is not just a current parade but it's a historic parade, and as I covet this from the 40th parade, as we approach our 90th parade, somebody, eventually, will hopefully do the same thing."

Each year, Kule is at the front of the parade in full regalia.

"It's a question that I get all the time," she says. "'What you are going to wear? What are you going to wear?'"

But her greatest joy comes before the start of the parade, in the wee hours of the morning.

"You get out there, the balloons are all inflated, and these gentle giants are sleeping on 77th and 81st Street," Kule says. "All the floats are lined up, and everything is just quiet."

People watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade for all sorts of reasons. Growing up in Wantagh, Long Island, Kule watched in order to avoid her mother and get out of peeling potatoes.

"I would sneak into her bedroom, into my parents’ bedroom, and I would turn it on and watch it very low so nobody knew I was awake," she says. "And I knew it was OK to go downstairs when I heard my father, who was in the living room, say, 'Santa Claus is here!' And I knew at noon, my mother was done." K

Kule says she always wanted to be a producer, behind the scenes, pulling everything together.

She studied history and art history at Ithaca College, where in 2012, she returned as commencement speaker and brought a piece of the parade with her, and offered advice from her mother.

"She kept it straightforward and simply said, 'Don't settle,'" Kule said at the commencement. "So there you have it. Don't listen to your parents. Listen to mine."

After graduation, she worked for a few years at an advertising agency. Then, she escaped.

"After those two years, I just packed a little bag and whispered to my parents, 'I'll see you later.' And I did," Kule says.

She traveled for five months through Israel and Greece. Was there any notion during that time of, "What's going to be? Is this all going to work out?"

"No, I was hiding. Are you kidding?" she says. "I was doing my absolute best to hide and not think about it, and the sun was shining, and beautiful people everywhere, and I was having a good time and doing my very best to bury the fact that I have to go back and actually live a life.

"I remember promising myself that I would never be in retail, I never wanted to be in fashion, I never wanted to work for a huge corporation," Kule says.

So much for that promise. She got an interview at Macy's, meeting with the woman who ran the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade for 24 years, Jean McFaddin.

"I said to her, 'Even if I don’t get this job, I just want you to know that it was a pleasure meeting you, and this was a really big day for me.' And she looked at me, she said, 'Honey, you don’t worry about it. I think you’re going to have a long future here.' And she was right," Kule says. "And it never occurred to me that there she was, sitting in the chair, that one day, I’d be sitting in that chair."

There is that other huge Macy's event on the Fourth of July.

Mishkin: You can tell us. We won't tell anybody. Are you part of the Hudson River or the East River faction?
Kule: It's definitely a river.
Mishkin: (laughs) Nice.

"When somebody does ask me that question – 'Isn't it great you only have to do two events a year?' – there's a whole team that produces about 5-, 6,000 events in our Macy's stores from day to day," Kule says.

Her work – a passion, actually – is all-encompassing.

"I had an old boss before who explained to me that there was no such thing as a work/life balance, that you should just work more and forget your life," Kule says. "I said, 'I’ve already done that.' He said, 'Then you’re doing your job.'"

Kule is now an entrenched part of the parade, so much so that the longtime musical director for the parade, Milton Delugg, once wrote a piece of music specifically for her.

"My very first parade, when I cut the ribbon and marched down the street, I marched into Herald Square to Milton’s march that he wrote for me, and he signed it 'Milton and Amy,'" she says.

Kule's work doesn't end when the parade does. Preparation for next year is already underway, and there are even some thoughts for the 100-year anniversary in 2026.

"I've never been in a place in this country where you mention the parade and there's not that sense of joy that comes across somebody's face," Kule says. "It's lofty to say, but we do say that it's not just a march down the streets of New York. It is a march through somebody's life."