As New Year’s Eves go, Megan Roubian Young admits 2024 won’t be too romantic.
“Usually, somebody on the street starts counting down. We join in, give each other a kiss and then we get in our pods and go to sleep,” she said. But what this New Year’s gig lacks in luxurious accommodations, it makes up for in fun and tradition.
Young and her husband Chris, both 43, will be driving the U.S. Army float at the 136th Rose Parade, their second go at operating the mobile, floral spectacle at the Southern California institution.
It’s especially fitting that Chris Young, a newly-retired Major in the U.S. Army born and raised in Whittier, will be piloting that Armed Forces branch’s float on its 250th anniversary.
“I just think it’s such an honor to be driving this with my wife in the Rose Parade,” he said. “I’m so happy.”
Tired-happy might be a better word. After their low-key bow to 2025, the Chino couple will wake up at 4 a.m., accept a breakfast burrito, and put away their hand and foot warmers, camp chairs, pop-up tent from Chris’ Army days, and a cooler. Then it’s time to steer their float into the parade lineup.
“After we’re all staged in position, the horses come out and then it gets started and it’s a blur,” Chris Young said. “Even though we’re out there on the route 30-plus hours, it just seems like it goes by so fast.”
Young is the backseat driver in this duo, relying on his wife’s instructions and a small screen to propel the float safely down 5.5 miles on Colorado Boulevard. Young, a graduate of La Serna High and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, volunteered for the driving job, driven by family custom as much as a sense of adventure.
His father-in-law, Guy Roubian, will mark his 50th Rose Parade in 2025, and Chris “knew he wanted to take the mantle and continue the proud family tradition,” Megan said. Roubian has driven the presenting sponsor’s float in the Rose Parade since 1974.
The job is far from a bed of roses, especially this year, Megan said.
“My husband’s in the back, I’m in the front, he’s steering. I’m taking commands from the front and basically directing him where to go (via headsets),” she said.
“But I can’t see anything. I just see off the video,” Chris adds. “But I trust her. She’s so calm with me.”
The give and take is kind of like, oh yes, a marriage.
The two met in 1999 while both were working at Raging Waters in San Dimas but didn’t reconnect until 20 years later. They married in 2023 and have five children, all of whom are steeped in the Army traditions as well as Rose Parade ones, their parents said.
“I love being able to drive with my dad, and it’s really exciting thing introducing my husband to this world that I’ve been in my whole life,” Megan said.
Her earliest Rose Parade memory is of a very tall clown float her dad drove in the early ’80s.
“It was the tallest thing I’d ever seen,” she said. “We would always attend media days and check out where my dad would be sitting during the parade and then watch the parade from my uncle’s yard and yell to my dad along the route and wait for him to wave at us from the driver compartment. There have been so many cool floats over the years, with bungee jumpers, surfers, supermodels and I even got to meet the ‘real’ Jack from Jack in the Box.”
Nostalgia-fueled, and for them, rooted in tradition, the Rose Parade is an exclamation point to a year they spend in their non-parade lives. Chris Young is a JROTC teacher at Downey High School and Megan works as a business development manager for a probiotics manufacturer.
“The best day ever for me is January 1st, 2025, with me and my wife driving the U.S. Army 250th anniversary float,” Chris Young said, referring to this year’s parade theme, “Best Day Ever!”. “I tell you the Army gave me everything. It took a young guy out of Whittier and gave him a career, a future, turned me into a airborne Ranger infantry officer, sent me to West Point, got me a college education, sent me to deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, where I got to lead soldiers and bring them all home safely.”
The Youngs said they enjoy sharing the wonder of the Rose Parade with their children, friends from all over the country and each other. The best part about this experience is spending time together and making memories, they added.
“I love her kind heart, her supportive nature, the way she takes such good care of me and our kids, and obviously, her beauty,” Chris Young said.
His wife returns the love, praising her husband’s adventurous spirit and support. Only he could get her out of her warm, comfortable bed on New Year’s Eve, and that says it all.