What Flo From Progressive Really Did For A Living Before Her TV Fame

Flo from Progressive is a television icon, but the woman behind her was relativity unknown for most of her career. When Stephanie Courtney first starred in the Progressive commercials in 2008, she was a month shy of her 38th birthday. But to get to that point, Courtney had to display a lot of perseverance. Courtney originally aspired to be a Broadway actor, a dream she carried since she was a girl. "I had a very normal childhood other than the fact that I was in plays all the time," she penned in a 2015 Cosmopolitan essay.

Her native Stony Point, New York, is home to "the gutsiest little theater", Penguin Rep, which inspired Courtney to pursue acting as a career. "I auditioned for a scholarship [at the theater] and I didn't get it, but I remember I still wanted to do this. Nothing could knock me down too hard to dissuade me," she wrote. But the path wasn't clear, especially because her father was dead-set on sending her to college. So she did. In 1992, Courtney graduated with an English degree from Binghamton University.

That didn't mean she abandoned her dreams. "I was never tortured over whether I wanted to become an actor," Courtney told Binghamton University Magazine in 2009. "There was never another option in my mind." One of her college professors encouraged her to enroll at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse to hone her improv skills. Courtney fell in love — but realized she was going to find ways to support herself. 

At Neighborhood Playhouse, Stephanie Courtney came to understand she would never give up on the idea of being an actor. "That's when I also realized that I was going to have a bunch of survival jobs and I would have to get comfortable with being fired a lot," she wrote for Cosmopolitan. She wasn't afraid to get down to it. She quickly found a job waiting tables, though it was short-lived. "I am a terrible waitress," she admitted.

Courtney then made a living working at an Italian grocery store and later answering the phone at a brokerage firm. "From then on, it was lots of temping and lots of catering for many, many years," she detailed. Courtney later saw that stage acting wasn't the only way to fulfill her passion. So she turned her focus to comedic work and moved to Los Angeles to pursue it in 1998. To accomplish that new goal, she began starring in commercials.

In 1999, Courtney earned a spot in a Bud Light Super Bowl ad. "I was like, 'I'll quit all my day jobs!' And then that dried up, and then I had to call back to all my day jobs," she told Cleveland.com in 2009. Commercials continued to help Courtney pursue her dreams, with spots in ads from Skittles and Glade to Toyota. But it was hard. "I would book maybe under one commercial a year, just enough that I would keep auditioning," she wrote for Cosmopolitan.

While she worked regular jobs and appeared in commercials here and there, Stephanie Courtney kept auditioning and took classes at The Groundlings sketch comedy troupe, where she befriended the likes of Kristen Wiig. "(Courtney is) one of the funniest people I've ever known in my life," Wiig told The New York Times Magazine in 2023. But despite her talents, Courtney just wasn't getting big parts. That's not to say she wasn't getting any parts, as Courtney has actually appeared in some pretty big shows.

In 2006, when Courtney auditioned for "Mad Men," she caught showrunner Matthew Weiner's attention. She read for the role of Joan, one of the main characters, but ended up cast as Marge, a switchboard operator with minimal screen time. "I was so stinkin' broke," she told The New York Times Magazine. The previous year, Courtney had also appeared in Lisa Kudrow's "The Comeback." 

In 2007, both her ads experience and the work she had been doing at The Groundlings proved worth it. Courtney got cast in the Progressive commercials thanks to her improv skills and some unscripted words she added toward the end. When the customer said, "Wow," to the extras he received after signing up for insurance, Courtney said back to him: "Wow! I say it louder." That's how the Flo we know came to be. "When she said that, we realized she really had something special; she was a character with real character," Progressive CMO Jeff Charney told Fast Company in 2018.