McFeely: Stephanie Goetz’s life is fly as ex-Fargo TV anchor and husband market Vegas home for $18.5 million – InForum

FARGO — Last time The Forum caught up with former local television anchor Stephanie Goetz, she and husband Endre Holen were sharing business tips with students at North Dakota State University. Things were good, she said in 2019.

Update: Things are still good. Some might say better.

Goetz and her husband were recently featured in a lengthy Wall Street Journal article focusing partially on their story together, partially on their lives as pilots, but mostly on the fact they are selling the house they built outside of Las Vegas so they can build another.

Asking price of current home: $18.5 million.

Hey-ooooooooh.

John Martorano / Las Vegas Sotheby’s International Realty

Potential cost of future home: Probably more, but I didn’t ask because it’s nobody’s business. And it doesn’t seem to be an issue on multiple fronts.

“We love building things together and we love creating things together,” Goetz said in a phone conversation this week. “So we thought, ‘Let’s do it again.'”

Goetz, a 38-year-old Minnesota native, was a TV anchor and reporter at WDAZ in Grand Forks and WDAY and Valley News Live in Fargo before venturing off on her own in 2016. She met Holen at Mezzaluna restaurant in downtown Fargo in 2014, they were enamored immediately and the couple married in the Twin Cities in 2019. They had a party at their home in 2022 celebrating their wedding.

Holen, 60, was a senior partner at McKinsey and Co., a worldwide management consulting firm, for decades before retiring to start his own executive coaching business when he and Goetz were dating.

Goetz’s life is fly.

Karissa Russ photo

(“Fly” is a slang term, or at least was [it’s hard to keep up with kids these days], meaning stylish, attractive, sophisticated. There’s an adage in newspaper writing, and in actual real life, that if you have to explain a one-liner then it’s not worth using. But in this case, I had to use “fly” because it fits perfectly.)

Goetz and Holen are passionate pilots and the owners of three planes, including a Cessna Citation V jet. They are both flight instructors. Goetz works as a pilot for NetJets, which offers fractional ownership shares in private business jets (she still owns and operates Goetz Communications, a business consulting firm for which she left local TV to start).

Goetz became interested in flying when when she was working in Fargo TV. Victor Gelking, a longtime flight instructor and local ballroom dancing teacher who died in 2022, called her and asked if she was interested in doing a story on flying. She agreed. Gelking sat her in the left seat, the pilot’s spot, in a plane.

“When I pulled back on the yoke I thought, ‘Where have you been all my life?'” said Goetz, who later attained her pilot’s license after taking instructions from her husband.

Flying, in other words, is integral to the story.

John Martorano / Las Vegas Sotheby’s International Realty

That includes the house Goetz and Holen are trying to sell. The Journal describes their home, located on a mountain ridge in the Vegas suburb of Henderson, Nev., as having “airplane-esque features, such as sharp angles and glass walls.”

It perhaps wasn’t intended. The first architectural plans offered them by high-end real estate development firm Blue Heron featured a Southwestern-style home. That was a whiff. The second version was a modern open-space, high-ceiling, glass-centric structure with stunning views of the Strip and the Red Rock Mountains beyond.

“There is nothing in our home that we’d change,” Goetz said. “It’s rare to say that when you build a home.”

The house is about 10,000 square feet, set on little more than a half-acre in a gated community. The Sotheby’s listing says it has seven bedrooms and 7 1/2 bathrooms.

“The home boasts sensual yet sophisticated features like a hidden primary suite with private outdoor shower, cabana and spa. Access the primary suite with the waive of a hand giving it all the 007 vibes,” the listing says. “Eliminate all boundaries between the indoor and outdoor of the home as you open the sliders and step out into your private oasis perfect for entertaining. Enjoy an over 2,000 square feet infinity edge pool and spa or entertain in your outdoor kitchen while soaring over Las Vegas.

John Martorano / Las Vegas Sotheby’s International

“Work out in your full gym while floating over the city or work from home with side-by-side glass offices, all with panoramic views of the strip and mountains.”

Goetz said the house has a “cigar deck” raised 30 feet above the floor.

Among the seemingly endless list of high-end amenities are a 10-foot-long steel coffee table with a built-in fire pit and a 20-foot-long kitchen island that’s half black granite and half white marble. There’s a 20-foot chandelier in the great room.

“I was the interior decorator. I did all the furnishings and that sort of thing,” Goetz said. “The place has to be livable, right? You have to live in the house.”

They moved into the place in May 2021. Goetz and Holen liked the creative building process so much they’re going to do it again. Their new home will be nearby, even higher up the mountain to offer even broader views. They’ve hired Blue Heron again and Goetz says the couple will be “very hands-on with every aspect of it.”

John Martorano / Las Vegas Sotheby’s International Realty

There will be a twist. When their current home sells, the new one won’t yet be ready. So Goetz and Holen purchased a yacht on the East Coast on which they’ll live in the meantime.

“We will follow the warmth, being further up the coast in the summer months and working our way south as fall comes,” Goetz said. “Or we can go wherever, really. That’s the plan.”

Goetz’s mother and father are from western North Dakota (her dad Bill Goetz played basketball at NDSU) and her extended family still ranches there. While she has roots in North Dakota and Minnesota, she and her husband (who is from Norway) decided they didn’t want to live in cold weather. Before building outside Vegas, they considered Florida, Texas and Arizona before deciding on Nevada because of the night life, restaurants and outdoor activities available.

They get back to Fargo and the Detroit Lakes, Minn., area “a couple of times” a year, given Goetz’s roots.

“It’s an adventure,” she said. “We’re very fortunate we’re able to do these things.”

Las Vegas Sotheby’s International Realty

Las Vegas Sotheby’s International Realty

John Martorano / Las Vegas Sotheby’s International Realty

John Martorano / Las Vegas Sotheby’s International Realty

Stephanie Goetz photo