Sunita Narma and Tracy Kessler — two women at different stages of their lives, but both searching for connection — feel as if they were each drawn to the North Fork.
One arrived seeking a fresh start after heartbreak — rebuilding her home and, in many ways, herself. The other, an empty-nester eager to put down permanent roots, set out in search of the soul of her new community, one handshake at a time. Together, they created NoFo Live, an increasingly popular weekly live streaming show on Instagram that celebrates the richness and breadth of the North Fork’s bustling business community by spotlighting the people behind the stores, restaurants and farm stands. An archive of past episodes — which air Friday morning’s at 9 a.m. — are available on their website.
What started as a simple idea—two neighbors celebrating their fellow small business owners—has since grown into a lively, must-watch conversation where honesty, humor and heartfelt storytelling take center stage.
“We are both transplants here,” says Narma. She and her husband have owned a summer home in Southold for about 15 years. After making their last college tuition payment for their youngest of three children, they picked up and moved to the North Fork full time in 2021. Kessler moved out to renovate and restore her great-grandmother’s beloved Jamesport beach cottage, where she is currently raising a young daughter, and fell in love with the area.
“I lived in New Jersey for 26 years,” Narma says. “I knew everything there. So moving to a new place was hard at first.”
She went at it head on.
“I physically walked into all the small businesses to meet the owners. I wanted to know ‘Where am I moving? What goes on there?’ I discovered Instagram and began following every account with ‘Nofo’ in the title.”
That’s how she met Kessler, who set roots down in 2017 after a bad divorce and began building a virtual community around the restoration of her great grandmother’s run-down cottage, inviting Instagram viewers to share her journey. She quickly accumulated a large following. (Her original handle was @NoFoTownandCountry.) She began to settle in to her new life. Her parents live across the bay in Jamesport and sometimes she’d paddle board over to their beachfront home.
For Kessler, a proud recovering alcoholic, 14 years sober and prone to bursts of disarming honesty, the posts grew more personal.
“I started out with ‘can I renovate this house?’” she says. “And I realized, by renovating the house I was kind of renovating my soul, and I started sharing that with people.”
One of those followers was Narma, who runs NoFo Style, a lifestyle brand focused on hand-crafted bags, robes and jewelry. She was moved by Kessler’s sincerity. She felt like she had found a new friend. They first met over a smoothie at The Giving Room in Southold.
Storytellers
Four years of broadcasting later, the co-hosts say that every new episode is an adventure.
“We just had on [Shelter Island restaurant Leon 1909 owner] Valerie Mnuchin,” Narma says. “All I really knew was that she was the owner and that she opened the restaurant with her father, but that was the extent of it. So it was wonderful to have her come on and talk about how they came up with the name, the background, the menu. So every Friday I’m excited because I get to learn something new about one of our neighbors.”
Then there are guests who surprise the co-hosts, like Mike Malkush from North Fork Vintage Cars.
“Mike is one of those unexpected guests who is such a storyteller,” Narma says. “I don’t even know if we talked about his business when he came on. We might have, but he can just talk, and it’s so interesting. So some guests come more prepared than others.”
Other memorable guests, they say, include Theresa DeMarco from One for All Gifts, Marilyn LoPresti from North Fork Bodies in Motion, Elizabeth Sweigart from The Times Vintage, Ira Haspel from KK’s The Farm, and Maria Maroni from Maroni Southold.
At lunch recently at On The Docks in Aquebogue, the two women seem like sisters and repeatedly chime in to finish each other’s thoughts. One of their favorite inside jokes about broadcasting is that Instagram’s settings only allows for one of them to be heard at a time.
“Thank God!” Narma declares, her infectious laugh ringing out across the waterfront dining room.
There are also lessons learned. One time, Kessler was listening to a guest so intently that her co-host and the guest thought her screen was frozen.
“From that point on, I realized that when I’m listening, I have to shake my head or blink or something.”
For Kessler, sobriety has been a lesson in both humility and honesty.
“My superpower is my vulnerability,” she says. “I will talk about anything, no matter how difficult or messy it was. I’ve seen the power of sharing: your mess is your message, right? To other people feeling less alone in the world when they hear someone willing to share what they’ve been through.”
Narma jumps in.
“I make fun of it but it allows you to connect with her without really even having met her. Everybody knows what’s going on Tracy’s life,” she says, giggling. “I mean, literally, everybody! So when we met in person, we were instantly friends.”
‘Not Selling Anything’
What’s made NoFo Live so sustainable for its co-hosts is its simplicity.
“We don’t have any equipment,” Narma says. “We’re each doing it from our own location. So it’s literally the app, your phone and boom, there you are — the conversation begins.”
There are no ads, no sponsors and no studio.
“It took a minute for people to realize that there was no agenda,” Kessler says. “We’re not selling anything. We’re not monetized. We’re not charging anybody from anything. There’s no advertising. There’s no ‘sponsored by IGA’ — which is not bad — but we’re not that. We’re celebrating the North Fork and everybody equally, whether you’re a tiny, tiny business, or you’re a huge business. We’re not bumping one [guest] for someone bigger.”
Both women say the broadcast is a a labor of love for the North Fork.
“We’re not trying to make money off of local life,” says Narma. “We’re trying to build the brand and the community.”
Kessler says that when there’s nothing to hide, there’s nothing to fear.
“I think why this show is successful — and I call it a show. I don’t even know what to call it, because we’ve never taken ourselves too seriously. When I first had my daughter, I was breastfeeding during shows. I joke all the time that, ‘Well, my hair and makeup team didn’t show up again today, guys.’ So it’s just very, very casual. And I think it disarms people when they come on. They feel comfortable with us, no matter how nervous they were before they get on. It’s just kind of like ‘we’re here!’”
A key feature of NoFo Live is a lightning round of five questions at the end of each show.
It began as a backstop and became a staple.
“From the first show, I said, ‘let’s do the same five questions to everybody … even just so we have something to talk about if all else goes bad, we know we have these five questions.
The questions include 1) If you were going to take us to lunch or dinner this week, where would you take us? 2) What are your favorite spots a) to watch the sunrise and b) to watch the sunset? 3) Favorite cocktail, mocktail, brewery or vineyard? 4) When cooking at home, what are your favorite farm stands to hit and what do you get there? And 5) Why do you like being part of the North Fork Community?
Kessler’s favorite question is the last one.
“What I really love about it is it’s always such a passionate answer. There are so many people who are so passionate about living here, that there’s always so much gratitude in that answer.”
On Location
When they started, they were mostly reaching out to friends with North Fork businesses. Soon they were booking a few weeks in advance. By end of their second year of broadcasting, in the spring of 2023, they were officially NoFo Live, and guests were pitching themselves to be on the program.
“Or alternately, there were people who would feel like, ‘why haven’t I been on the show?’ But we’re not choosing [some over others]. It’s an open invitation. Come on down!’”
“We would go visit [a North Fork business], go eat with them, get to know them, because that’s the end goal, but sometimes we’ll be meeting a guest for the first time on camera. That’s when we starting thinking about NoFo Live on location.
Kessler had done a number of events in collaboration with others as part of her local events company, A North Fork Affair, including crafting and social media workshops.
Halfway through year three, Narma says, “we decided that we need to celebrate what we’re doing because we’re now actually doing something. So we decided to throw a party, and invite all the guests we’ve had on so far, because some of them we’ve only seen on camera.”
The theme of this year’s third annual celebration at the Halyard at Sound View on May 14 is “Bollywood Night: Experience the Magic of Bollywood in the Heart of the North Fork.” (Get tickets here) Past guests get free admission while new patrons pay, simply to cover the cost of the event, the co-hosts say.
In year three the duo created their website.
“Before that we didn’t have an archive,” Narma says.
Kessler recalls that it was about seven years ago when she had her first, true North Fork moment.
“I was on the boat with my dad. He had to get something fixed on the boat, and he asked would I come with him? ‘I’ll take you to lunch if you come with me.’ So he picked me up. It was a Wednesday afternoon in June, and we’re scooting across the bay to go to lunch. And I remember patting him on the back, and I was like, ‘you got the life, man.’“And all of a sudden I was like, ‘I have the life! I’m going to lunch in the middle of the week on a Wednesday in June on a boat. And then I was just like, ‘Why would I leave here? This is amazing.’”
