DC ExtraTime: Someone You Should Know - JoJo

BY DC CUEVA                        

■ @DC408DXTR  @ IG/YT/SC/TB

On the post-Christmas Thursday last year, those of us who identify themselves as part of Challenge Nation were treated to a night to remember: two of those who've competed on past seasons of the fifth major pro sport took their talents to two different MTV shows in the aftermath of the two seasons of War of the Worlds. In the first hour, WOTW1 competitor Gus Symrios was joined in his Floribama Shore house by a fellow rookie from this past spring, Mattie Lynn Breaux, as the house picked up the pieces after his blowup with one-time bromance partner Jeremiah Buoni.
   And in the second half, the fourth American season of Ex On The Beach, and its winter-themed Peak of Love, provided us with a belated Christmas gift. Challenge alums Nicole Zanatta and Marlon Williams were called to join host Romeo Miller to see "Whose Ex is Next?" In came an ex of his from a few years earlier, Jemmye Carroll from The Real World: Back to New Orleans and a veteran of seven seasons of the fifth major pro sport. They had to face the music of going into the Sauna of Secrets to find out about the night he ghosted her - the reason for them being exes.

This winter of 2020 marks ten years since Jem packed up her clothes & heels, and traveled (via train, or all things) from her childhood home of Starkville, MS to New Orleans to film Season 24 in the Big Easy - the first of what is now nine seasons of MTV Reality programming that she has done. And it was exactly a decade ago tonight (as this post publishes on Friday, February 7th) that she and her castmates were on Bourbon Street to celebrate the Saints' stirring Super Bowl win, five years after the heart-wrenching experience that was Hurricane Katrina.
   It was also there in New Orleans that she met her longtime boyfriend, the late Ryan Knight, and it was only four years later on Thanksgiving that she and her MTV family were heartbroken by his untimely passing. It came only 13 days after the death of Challenge legend Diem Brown, before she and him competed on their last seasons of The Challenge on Battle of the Exes 2, for which he and Jem were partners more than two years after they broke up, and who also competed together on Rivals II and their first Challenge, Battle of the Seasons 2.

We'll be saving telling the story of Jemmye & Knight for another day... but instead, we'd like to focus the spotlight on someone well known who she's gotten to cross paths for this installment of Someone You Should Know. And it was sixteen years ago that the person who she met up with not long ago was one of the biggest pop stars on earth... and a few weeks ago, she had a night she has never had before in her musical career, as JoJo had her finest hour in the musical spotlight as she returned to the fore to pick up the most coveted piece of gold in the American music industry.