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Photo by Sam Harrel

Today, Twila Schuster is as famous as Miley Cyrus and Jeff Foxworthy.

The 46-year-old real estate broker shares the cover of Parade magazine’s annual list of “What People Earn” with the 15-year-old singing sensation and the comedian known for his redneck humor.

“I didn’t do it because I was thinking ‘I hope I get on the cover of Parade,’ I was doing it because I always look at that issue,” Schuster said.

The story of how she got on the cover began this time last year, when the previous “What People Earn” issue came out. Schuster saw an advertisement that Parade was looking for people to be included in the next edition of the survey, so she e-mailed the staff of the magazine, and surprisingly, they kept e-mailing her back for more information.

It was an intimidating process, she said, as several people from the magazine — which has an estimated readership of more than 71 million — sent her various questions about how much she made, and in particular, what she looked like.

“They ask you what you look like, then verify it with a picture,” Schuster said.

But when it came time to send her final picture off to Parade for inclusion in the issue, there was no one around to take it for her, so the mother of two had to take the photo with the aid of a timer. She’s not exactly thrilled with the final product.

“It’s not like it’s not a picture of me, it’s just a little bit different than if you saw me sitting here,” she said. “I don’t look like I’ve seen a ghost.”

Schuster isn’t exactly sure why she was chosen for the cover, other than the magazine tried to include people from every state, and she thinks there might not have been many people from Alaska who contacted Parade.

Beneath her picture, which is next to Jeff Foxworthy’s, it states she made $173,300 last year. She’s not concerned about letting people know what she makes, noting that if other people in the real estate industry wanted to figure it out, it wouldn’t be that difficult. She’s quick to point out, however, that being a broker means a good portion of that figure goes toward running her business.

“All those numbers that you see, they ask for gross,” she said

That number is also only what she made in 2007, and substantially less than the previous year when the housing market was in better shape across the nation. Alaska hasn’t been hit as hard as places like Nevada and California, but the housing market is down here as well. She calls 2006 “a banner year,” but said the number of sales last year were similar to what was sold in 2005.

“It is different here, although it did change,” Schuster said. “If you just started real estate in ’06, you would think that the world ended.”

Schuster came to Fairbanks more than 20 years ago when her husband was deployed to the city as part of his military service. She worked in advertising for a while, but said she hated the deadlines. In 2000, she decided to go into real estate.

And though millions of people will see her face today, she’s not nervous about her 15 minutes of fame. After all, she says, real estate and politics are the two careers where people need to know what you look like.

“My face has been on the Web for a long time, so I didn’t see it as that big of a deal,” she said. “If you’re in real estate, you have to have your face out there.”