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Steve Olive was my white whale.
I had been trying for two years to write a profile of Mr. Olive, the co-founder of Event Carpet Pros, the California-based company responsible for custom-making the colorful, though not always red, carpets for thousands of movie premieres, the Golden Globes, the Grammy Awards, the Super Bowl and, since 1997, the Academy Awards.
I learned about Mr. Olive in 2023, while reporting an article about why the organizers of the Oscars were rolling out a champagne-colored carpet that year. My editor, Katie Van Syckle, and I had found the Event Carpet Pros website and we took turns calling the listed number in an effort to reach someone. Finally, Katie connected with Mr. Olive, and briefly interviewed him.
But this mysterious, matter-of-fact, low-key man at the heart of the glitz and glamour of awards season stuck in my mind. I wanted to know more about him. How does one become a rug guy? What had he wanted to be when he grew up? Had he ever attended an award show himself?
Last year, when the Oscars returned to a classic red carpet, Katie and I again agreed that I should pursue a story on Mr. Olive, but he was hesitant. But this year, with the encouragement of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, he agreed. It was three weeks before the ceremony.
Mission: Steve, as I termed it, had officially begun.
I sent a barrage of frantic texts and placed several calls to Brooke Blumberg, a publicist for the academy, trying to nail down when the carpet, which was manufactured at a mill in Dalton, Ga., would arrive at the company’s warehouse in La Mirada, Calif., a city in Los Angeles County.
My goal was to be there when the approximately 30 rolls, each weighing 630 pounds, were unloaded in the Event Carpet Pros parking lot, from a truck that had been driven about 35 hours, from Dalton. The scene, I imagined, would be akin to the arrival of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree in New York City.
Despite my persistent overtures, Ms. Blumberg informed me that I had missed my chance. The truck had arrived at the warehouse the afternoon before I was planning to fly to Los Angeles.
“Oh darn!” I texted her. “We can hopefully get the install, though!” (The week before the ceremony, the 50,000-square-foot carpet is rolled into place by a crew of 20-some workers on Hollywood Boulevard.)
My next priority was meeting Mr. Olive at his office. But he had the flu, so I was told the interview might need to happen over a video call. Still, Katie and I thought I should go to California to capture the scene. And I wanted to meet his co-workers, as well as talk to the person who orders the red carpet for the Oscars from Mr. Olive each year.
When I finally made the decision to get on a plane, there was a chance that I might have neither the opportunity to talk to Mr. Olive in person nor to see the red carpet. But I bought a seat on a Wednesday afternoon flight and hoped for the best.
On my first day in La Mirada, I scouted out the Event Carpet Pros warehouse, a 36,000-square-foot white structure tucked among palm trees. Then, on Thursday night, I interviewed Joe Lewis, a producer for the Oscars who has ordered the awards show’s red carpet from Mr. Olive for the past 16 years.
On Friday morning, face mask on as a precaution, I visited Mr. Olive — now energetic, his bout with the flu evidently a distant memory — at his office inside the warehouse.
I’d had an idea of him in my head for two years, and I was curious to see if it matched the man. At 6-foot-2, bald and dressed entirely in black, he was somehow exactly as I’d imagined. He was, I learned, a former bodyguard for Mötley Crüe.
He had gotten into the red carpet business in 1992, with his brother-in-law, who installed tents around the country. I met Mr. Olive’s 26-year-old son, Nick, and his co-workers, all of whom told me the same thing: This is a man who doesn’t want, or need, the spotlight; he’s just happy making other people happy.
“I’m not good at this,” said Mr. Olive, as he awkwardly tried to follow the instructions of our photographer, Jennelle Fong, at what must have been his first-ever photo shoot, while standing on the Oscars red carpet.
A bit media shy, it took him some time to open up. And he was never really keen to discuss himself or his days as a bodyguard, for some of the hottest ’80s bands. “I’m not interesting,” he told me.
But I observed him becoming more comfortable as the talk turned to his lifeblood: carpets. He loved talking about his favorite collaborations over the years — all meticulously documented on the company’s Instagram account, which he created in 2013 — and sharing photos of his dog, Olive.
“You’ll make me look good, right?” he asked an hour and a half later, as we parted ways. I promised to send him a copy of the article after it was published.
Over the weekend, it was a frantic scramble to write my article. I wanted to capture not just Mr. Olive’s personality, but also the scope and scale of the modern “red carpet,” not just as a platform for fashion, but as a personal branding opportunity for celebrities. I wanted people to understand why what Mr. Olive was doing mattered.
I submitted my article on Monday morning; Ms. Fong photographed the installation of the red carpet on Hollywood Boulevard on Tuesday; and we had the story ready to go for Wednesday afternoon, when the carpet would be rolled out.
I didn’t get my Rockefeller Center Christmas tree arrival moment. But I witnessed something even better: One unassuming man, who neither wanted nor needed recognition, sharing his joy over his decades-long passion.
