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VIDEO: 'Grandma Drummer' Says She Loves To Play

We can't start the new week without posting more video of the "grandma drummer" who captured so much attention on Friday.

As we said in an update Saturday, the mystery woman who became a YouTube hit thanks to video of her rocking out at a La Cross, Wis., drum shop has been ID'd as Mary Hvizda, 63, of Onalaska, Wis.

Now, she's told local WKBT-TV about how she began drumming at the age of 15 and played in bands around Wisconsin until she was about 40.

"It was like every weekend and sometimes it was like five nights a week, and all kind of locally you know, but I loved it," Hvizda said. But after her last band — On The Road Again — broke up in 1990, "I couldn't find no other bands to play with, and then I did quit."

So she also sold her drum set, which explains why she had to do some showroom drumming when the bug to bang those skins hit her again.

Hvizda says she doesn't own a computer and wasn't aware of YouTube until she became a star on it.

Oh, and she's not a grandmother:

"I can't get used to being called Grandma," she tells WKBT. "I've never had children of my own and I never got married, but I am 63 and that is certainly grandma's age."

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Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.
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