My parents, Bernie and Myrna Hunhoff, started South Dakota Magazine here in Yankton 30 years ago. We were living in Gayville at the time. I remember dad doing page designs on the kitchen table. Within a year or two, they bought a big old brick building at Third & Pearl and we’ve been there ever since.

A big part of my childhood was spent in those offices - and I saw the many changes in technology that have shaped our publishing industry over the years. We were one of the first publications to have a website, thanks to Brian Walton who was a local tech pioneer in the early 1990s. Today we shoot digital photographs, we communicate every day with readers around the world and we send the magazine to the printer by hitting a key on the computer.

But throughout the last three decades our mission has never changed - to tell the stories of the people and places in South Dakota in an entertaining and engaging way. Over the years the magazine staff has learned that those stories have worth beyond entertainment - they tell us who we are as South Dakotans. “Reading the magazine should be like seeing your reflection in the lake,” my dad wrote for the magazine’s 20th anniversary. “The man in the water grins and you grin. He squirms and so do you. He grows sad and you know why.”

After growing up in Yankton and working at the magazine a little during high school, I left for the University of Minnesota. I returned to Yankton and to the magazine in 2001. Since then we’ve celebrated three anniversaries (we like celebrations!) - our 20th in 2005, our 25th in 2010 and now our 30th. This latest milestone is perhaps our most sentimental because we recently had the biggest change the magazine has yet seen: my good friend Heidi Marsh and I purchased the magazine from my dad in September of 2014.

Heidi has been at the magazine for 6 years and before that was our intern during her college years. We knew each other long before that, though - we showed horses together in Yankton County’s Boots and Saddles 4-H club as youngsters. Besides our love for horses, we both grew up with an appreciation for this place we call home and the stories that we believe help define who we are as South Dakotans. Heidi oversees our marketing and advertising departments. Over the last three decades our magazine readers have steadily grown to over 44,000, which in marketing terms, Heidi often reminds me, is over 180,000 readers.

Fortunately, we were able to hire my dad on as a writer and photographer. He’s handy because he never gets lost in South Dakota - though he’s been known to get turned around in Rapid City some times.

Heidi and I are often asked what changes we are going to make at the magazine. It’s a hard question for us. We love the magazine and our goal right now is to try to make every issue better than the last.

But we do have some new and different projects in the works - including about four book ideas that we would like to do in the next few years. We are especially excited about the possibility of working with Yankton photographer Dave Tunge on an aerial photography book.

We may also expand our collection of map prints. We persuaded world-renowned map artist Mike Reagan to create a topographical map of the state several years ago. Last year he added a beautiful map of the Black Hills. We sell prints of both maps and plan on adding a map of the Missouri River in the future.

But before we publish any more books or maps we have some celebrating to do. We plan on kicking off our 30th anniversary year with a special “Collector’s Edition” for our March/April issue. The issue will feature 20 of our favorite stories throughout the years, a collection of humorous stories throughout our state’s history, some great South Dakota foods and a special section on surprises we’ve encountered during our travels throughout the state. We also will include a list of every staff member we’ve employed at the Pennington House. Whether they stayed a month or a decade, each person helped make the magazine what it is today.

This summer we will be tuning up the magazine’s “delivery

truck,” an old green ‘49 Chevy that my parents bought in 1978. We intend to take it on a tour of our state’s festivals this summer. Our plan is to talk to our readers and maybe serve cold watermelon slices in honor of the anniversary. We hear that Lawrence Welk and his band did something like that many years ago for WNAX so we’re in pretty good company. We can’t play the accordion, but he didn’t have a ‘49 Chevy pickup.

Despite our new roles as publishers and a big summer tour, most things won’t be changing. We still publish from Territorial Governor John Pennington’s house on Third Street. We love the old building, and we recently built a fire in the fireplace for the first time in about five years. Dad’s dog Yeller, a 12-year-old golden retriever mix, is still hanging around our offices and is our official greeter at the front door. And the old Chevy may not make deliveries but we do take it out for errands, decorate it for parades and now for the first time we will be taking it around the state.

The magazine is more fun for us than it’s ever been. We intend to make sure that it continues to be just as interesting and fun for our readers because while my name and Heidi’s are on the masthead as publishers, we’ve always known that it really belongs to anyone and everyone who loves South Dakota.

Our talented staff includes nine other co-workers, all of whom have made the transition easy for us. They include John Andrews, Roger Holtzmann and Rebecca Johnson in the editorial department; our graphic designer Andrea Maibaum; Jana Lane, Renee Becker and Emily Vanderhule in our circulation department; our intern Lauren Janssen; our accountant Ruth Steil; and Laura Johnson Andrews, who helps with everything from marketing to writing food articles (she just finished a great story on our area’s kolache tradition).