Caroline County native Wayne “Ty” Reese has been making moves and spreading joy with his Uncle Grandpa character busting out all over the country. He recently won Live with Kelly and Ryan’s Virtual Dance Trivia contest and has racked up over four million views on Tik-Tok. All that while working towards his Master of Social Work degree and raising five (soon to be six) children makes this local guy a pretty interesting dude!

A 1997 graduate of North Caroline High, Wayne enlisted in the Army two months after graduation and served our country until his honorable discharge in 2008. Throughout his CCPS career at Denton Elementary, Lockerman Middle School and North Caroline High and into his Army years, Wayne developed a reputation as a cut-up, frequently being called the “class clown”. He developed a love for entertaining and in 2014, developed a character named Uncle Grandpa. “The reason behind the origin of Uncle Grandpa was basically a message to the Baltimore Club Culture that dancing has no age limit.”, says Reese. “At that point in time, I was the oldest active dancer on the scene, so everyone started referring to me as Uncle Ty which, in the beginning, I didn’t like because it felt like an insult but after consideration, I realized it just meant I was respected”.

He quickly learned how much he was respected by the other dancers, especially around competition time. Reese first came on the Baltimore club scene in 2011 when he started frequenting The Paradox on Friday nights. One of the DJ’s noticed him and encouraged him to enter a competition called “King of the Chamber”. “I was definitely older than all the others but I wasn’t gonna let that stop me!”, said Reese. “I felt like I needed to let everyone know not to sleep on me just because I was much older than the majority of the dancers”, he added. He ended up coming in second place in that competition, earning him the title “Prince of the Chamber” and a spot in the King of Baltimore Dance Competition. Reese competed in four KOB competitions and it was at his fourth one in 2014 that Uncle Grandpa hit the stage for the first time. “Not only did I send a powerful message that night of the competition, but I gave birth to something I had no idea how EPIC it would become thanks to social media”, he added. Uncle Grandpa made his debut in 2014 and hasn’t looked back. He now has more than 326,000 followers, with one particular video that was filmed in the Denver airport that has been viewed more than four million times. And now he can add “Live with Kelly and Ryan Virtual Dancer of the Year”to his list of accomplishments! In October 2022, at the suggestion of his classmate Amy Horne, Reese submitted a clip to the show. He didn’t win for the week he entered so he forgot about it. In late January, the show’s producers called to let him know he’d won and would be appearing live on the show for an interview, where the hosts of the show congratulated him and told him he’d won a $2,500 gift certificate to Barnes & Noble.

There’s no stopping him now! Since the Live with Kelly and Ryan show, Wayne has appeared on WBOC News, Delmarva Life, Fox 45, WJZ TV, and 97.5. This May, Reese will graduate from Salisbury University with a master’s degree in social work. He hopes to combine his love of entertaining and bringing joy to others with his skills as a social worker and helping others to succeed in life and feel better about themselves. You can find him on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter – and you might even spot him breaking out into dance right here in Caroline County. Just look for the gray beard, the cane, and the energy that won’t quit!