 CJ DiRoma is on a first-name basis with Kenny Rogers, receives phone calls from Katherin Pacino, and has gotten kudos from Billy Ray Cyrus, Regis Philbin and Johnny Mathis. To her, it’s all in a day’s work.
In an industry known for its prima donnas, DiRoma is the antithesis, working behind the scenes to bring celebrity star power to clients of her Merchantville-based concert and events production firm, Station Avenue Productions.
DiRoma’s clients include a mass of organizations that call upon her to produce special events at venues around the nation and throughout the world. Using her anything-is-possible mindset to pull off spectacular concerts as well as intimate private affairs, DiRoma makes it seem easy.
"In show business, it’s 90 percent business, and 10 percent show," says DiRoma, whose roster of music legends includes Aretha Franklin, Carole King and Willie Nelson.
Indeed, producing a successful concert or event is all in the details. It’s matching the artist to the audience and the client’s budget. It’s safely erecting three-ton steel stages with monstrous sound systems. Get people to dinner on time, on stage on time, and synchronize a thousand other details to achieve success, and you have a day in the life of producer CJ DiRoma. Somehow, she manages to nail every task - while pulling a few rabbits out of her hat, just for fun.
Like the time Billy Ray Cyrus was playing a concert for then-client, Dover Downs Slots, and he announced to the media and a sold-out crowd that he was performing a thank-you concert for the troops at Dover Air Force Base right after the show. This was news to DiRoma, who was thrust into overdrive to make it happen. Through sheer will and impeccable gifts of persuasion, she arranged for Cyrus to play an intimate concert in an airplane hangar for an unforgettable, impromptu midnight event. The airmen asked Cyrus questions and made requests. He was gratified beyond words. Afterwards, the star and DiRoma were invited into the cockpit of a C-130, and he paid her the "sweetest" compliment she had ever heard: "I would be honored to work with you again."
Those words were important to DiRoma, not because they confirmed that she had arrived, but because of how she got there.
Carrie Jayne Kline was born in California, the oldest child of a teenage mother who had three marriages and three children by age 21. When she was seven, the family relocated to New Jersey, where she, her mom, stepfather, brother, and sister, who has developmental disabilities, tried to make the best of life. But the marriage didn’t last and money was scarce. Young CJ was shuttled to and from relatives’ homes throughout the country. And when the family reunited, her mom worked to exhaustion, leaving the kids at home with big sister CJ in charge.
"I never went to dances," says DiRoma, who graduated from Edgewood High School in Sicklerville, where she got along with everyone and was vice-president of student council. "It just wasn’t cool for kids to be friends with someone who had a mentally-retarded sister," she adds, with a hint of anger in her voice. As fiercely protective of her younger sister today as she was then, she recalls a childhood filled with more fights than parties, more responsibilities than fun.
At that time, a life in the arts seemed out of reach. "I had minimal talent to sing. I had one dance lesson and my mom couldn’t afford it, so I stopped dancing. I had one piano lesson from the neighbor down the street and I had to work for him in the garden to pay for it. And my mom said if you could work for him, you could make money for us because the family needs it."
Far from these humble beginnings, DiRoma has earned her reputation as one of the entertainment industry’s most professional, detail-driven producers. Nevertheless, she is quick to deflect praise and share credit with others, including her former husband, 1970’s Capitol recording artist Ron DiRoma, whose talent and passion for music led to the launch of Station Avenue Productions, shortly before the birth of their daughter in 1992. "Who I am today is thanks to Ron," she says. "He was my mentor in the music business."
They met when she was 21. Twenty years her senior, Ron DiRoma was a handsome Wildwood native, decorated Vietnam veteran, and a pal of Fabian, Bobby Rydell and Frankie Avalon. As the couple built the business, they raised Ron’s sons, Ronnie, now 31, and Nick, 27, along with their daughter, Gabriella, who is currently an eighth grader.
"Family is the most important thing in the world to me," says DiRoma, whose disabled sister, Tammy, 43, comes home on weekends. Told she would never be able to have children, she considers daughter Gabriella - named after the angel Gabriel - to be her greatest accomplishment. "I treasure my relationship with my daughter above all things," she says. "I have been blessed."
Though she’s produced more than 500 concerts and shows for artists including Chicago, America, and Blood Sweat & Tears, DiRoma is blissfully down-to-earth.
Her home and office are devoid of grip-and-grin photos one would expect from a show-business veteran. She has no trinkets, no keepsakes, no special effects from the performers with whom she works. Instead she has many wonderful stories and fond memories that she keeps to herself.
She is more proud of her kitchen cabinets, which she painstakingly sanded, primed, painted and glazed over a six-month period. She talks about canning her own fruits and vegetables and serving home-baked goodies at a local soup kitchen with her daughter. And she is most grateful for opportunities to use her talents and connections to make a difference in others’ lives.
There have been many times when DiRoma recognizes how her career and her childhood dreams intersect. "Whenever I have a major show, and I watch the artist creating their art and the audience is happy, the client is happy and everything is perfect, I say to myself, ‘Oh my goodness, how did I get here?’"
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