"This is the only salon where you'll find March Madness on television," says Ruesink of Loveland, a customer of 20 years.  Mary sees another client dozing under a hair dryer across the room.  "You asleep under there, Miss Jean?" she asks.  The woman's eyes flutter, and she giggles.

The place buzzes with end-of-the-week excitement. Many customers have dates or special weekend engagements. Cell phones and land lines jingle above the thump of R&B Muzak playing over the sound system.

Mary Barkley (left) and customer Maisha Gray-Diggs of Middletown listen to Mary’s granddaughter, Reonna Shearer, play a trivia game with questions from her Pringles can at Mary’s You Are So Beautiful Hair Studio, Pleasant Ridge

Always, Mary has loved making people look good and feel good.  "Sometimes my clients are down," she says. "I can tell. If they want to talk about whatever is taking them down, I don't let them talk about it long."  She could've named her shop "You Are So Happy." 

But few knew how sad Mary was 11 years ago this month, when her 19-year-old daughter, Maria, died from sickle-cell anemia.  "I could work all day here and smile, no problem," Mary says somberly on another afternoon, after her last customer has left. "But at home at night it was different. I'd just watch 'Montel' and eat."  Because he worked most nights at his personal training gym in Pleasant Ridge, Mary's husband, Darryl, didn't realize how depressed his wife was until he came home early one night.  "When he saw me, he changed his schedule to be at home with me," Mary says.  She began exercising, lost weight and eventually broke out of her depression.  Mary keeps a framed picture of Maria on a shelf behind her station.  "As time goes by, you get better, you learn to live without that person you loved," she says. "But you never forget them."  Only five months after Maria died, Mary's 14-year-old daughter, Jean, gave birth to a little girl, Reonna Shearer. Early on, Mary decided Jean wasn't ready to raise her daughter, so she took Reonna in as her own.  "It's hard sometimes," Mary says of her second round of motherhood. "But Reonna's not a bad kid."  Although Reonna spends most of her time with her grandmother, she still sees her mother and father.  Most days, Mary gets up after 6 a.m. to take Reonna, who's 10, to John P. Parker School in Madisonville, where she's in the fourth grade. In the afternoon, Mary will leave the salon to pick up her granddaughter. Reonna then spends the afternoon at the shop doing homework and entertaining customers.  That Friday, Reonna tests her bubblegum-blowing skills and taunts stylist Jason Robinson.  "I'm going to open my own shop before you," promises Reonna, who is learning to braid hair on a mannequin head. "I'm going to open mine when I'm 20."

Sometimes, Reonna talks while watching herself make dance moves in a mirror. She loves to dance.  Later, she shocks everyone by declaring that pop music star Usher is "out of style."  What? customers and stylists respond in disbelief.  The youngest woman in the salon announces her favorite singers are Ciara, Missy Elliot and D4L. They are in style.  Everyone laughs. It's as if Reonna is her grandmother's feel-good sidekick.  After 5 p.m., Reonna follows Mary back to a tiny pink- and lavender-walled room in the rear of the shop, where her grandmother sits on a stool to eat microwaved spinach lasagna between appointments.  "Bye," a woman yells to her from the front of the salon.  "You be-have now" Mary shouts back, laughing.  Her customer service philosophy isn't written down in a mission statement somewhere. It's instinctive and genuine.

"I try to speak to everyone," she says. "It doesn't cost anything." Five minutes later, when she finishes her evening meal, Mary returns to her station to curl, straighten and chat. She'll work another three hours before she and Reonna go home.  Her clients all leave that night looking good, and feeling better.

Mary Barkley works with customer Bill Ruesink of Loveland, who has been coming to You Are So Beautiful in Pleasant Ridge for 21 years.

Mary Barkley, owner of the You Are So Beautiful Hair Studio in Pleasant Ridge, works with her granddaughter, Reonna Shearer, 10.