From the manicured quiet of Kate Tunnell’s suburban Nocatee street, her former life in big-city fashion felt like a dream receding in the rearview.
But the instincts she sharpened in New York and Dallas — the ability to spot a singular face in a crowd, protect it, and shepherd it to the catwalk — never dulled.
They simply went dormant, waiting for a reason to wake up.
Now, with decades in the business, she’s building something unexpected: a bridge between Northeast Florida’s overlooked talent and the high-gloss world of global fashion.
Her own entry into the industry came unannounced. As a teenager on a routine trip to the mall with her family, a scout from Seventeen magazine stopped her in her tracks. The tall blonde from New Jersey soon found herself in front of the camera.
She modeled throughout college, until the glamour gave way to the grind. The backstage began calling louder than the spotlight.
By 2002, she’d stepped behind the scenes as a scout for a major agency. A few years later, she was careening across the country on a national model search, scanning for fresh faces at every stop to compete for contracts.
“It was fast, chaotic, and exhilarating,” she says. “You meet dynamic people, you travel to incredible places. It was a special time — and I was good at what I did.”
Kate wasn’t just an agent. She was a tactician, a quiet force behind the curtain, translating the language of fashion to those just learning to speak it.
“A great model in the wrong hands goes nowhere,” she says. “But with the right eyes — and the right push — everything can change.”
In time, life took a gentler turn. Marriage and motherhood shifted her focus. She still booked the occasional plus-size modeling job, but true gratification came from shaping others’ journeys, not being the face of her own.
She relocated to St. Johns County with her then husband, helping to expand a commercial roofing firm the couple had launched while living in Dallas.
Having traded high heels and fast lanes for yoga pants and golf carts, the fashion world felt increasingly remote — like a glamorous city glimpsed from a plane window, already shrinking beneath the clouds.
But some skills never fade, even after extended disuse.
When a Nocatee neighbor posted a few casual photos of her daughter, Maya Kalush, on social media, something stirred. Kate’s eye, long attuned to beauty with commercial potential, locked on instinctively.
She reached out on Facebook, explaining her background. Her message was gentle, but certain: Maya had something rare. And Kate knew how to help her cultivate it.
That conversation would change the young woman’s path.
Maya, a student at Nease High School, eventually signed a three-year contract with Ford Models in Miami.
Kate was there for every step — helping secure a Florida talent license, arranging test shoots, preparing Maya for an industry that can be dazzling one moment and ruthless the next.
Maya’s mother, Lara Kalush, said Kate’s quiet confidence helped ease the natural fears. She wasn’t some stranger from a casting call — she was a neighbor, a mother, someone with both a résumé and a moral compass.
“We felt really comfortable with Kate,” she told The Citizen. “There’s an ease there that we would never have had with someone else.”
Maya’s success sparked something deeper. Kate began to wonder: how many other teens in Northeast Florida might have that same spark, but no map forward?
That question became the seed of a business The Model Group.
She returned to the industry officially — this time as St. Johns County’s only dedicated “mother agent,” someone who discovers, nurtures, and manages a model’s career from the first uncertain step to their ascent on the global stage.
Unlike traditional agents, mother agents earn only when the model does — a structure Kate sees not just as fair, but essential.
She believes the growing region is brimming with potential — not just in looks, but in spirit. There’s something about the quiet confidence of many local teens, she said, that aligns with the fashion world’s prevailing trends.
“When I started, the standard was 5’9″ and a size 0,” she says. “Today, clients want something else. They want people who feel like people.”
That said, placement still matters. New York demands height and edge. Miami leans toward the commercial and sun-kissed. Paris favors beauty that bends the rules. It’s not just about the look — it’s about the fit.
And finding that fit, Kate says, is what she does best.
Kate can be reached at [email protected] or at (904) 316-2595.
