The Voice That Narrates House Hunters Speaks Out

Andromeda Dunker has a voice millions of people would recognize immediately, but a face almost nobody knows. That's because she has narrated reality TV shows, most notably in HGTV's House Hunters franchise, since 2009 without ever being in the spotlight. Now, she's spoken with BuzzFeed to share her personal side after, as she puts it, having "remained in the shadows." Born at Yale University in Connecticut to a biophysicist and astrophysicist (yes, her mother named her Andromeda after the galaxy), Dunker nearly missed her chance at fame. She describes getting the call from her agent telling her to audition for House Hunters while driving with friends during a visit to Portland, Ore., and being told she had five minutes to file.

"We raced back to my friend's house," she says. "I sat in my goddaughter’s room with a Hello Kitty blanket over my head and I recorded this House Hunters script audition really quickly and sent it in. So I almost missed it." The third narrator in the show's 18 years on the air, she now records 10 to 20 episodes a week in addition to other voice jobs. (Here's a sample.) Though as the daughter of world-class scientists she's worried about whether her work is meaningful enough, she says people tell her it's like she's "tucking them in at night," and "that feels good ... like it's useful." She lives in Hollywood with her husband, a photographer who leads meditations, and their dogs Sadie and Chloe. (These are the celeb voices behind 15 commercials.)