RADFORD -- The gatekeeper at NBC's "Today Show" acted like he had heard it all before.

"My husband grew up with Katie," Kathy Lillard told him outside the studio on a chilly Monday morning. "And the guy was kind of like, 'OK, sure.' "

But he agreed to pass the name along to Katie Couric with a note saying Tom Lillard and his family would be in the outdoor crowd at Rockefeller Center holding up a lime-green sign.

Lillard, athletic development director at Radford University, did indeed grow up in the same Arlington neighborhood as the "Today" co-host and future CBS news anchor.

She was one class behind him at Yorktown High School. They had not seen each other since he left to attend Radford and she went to the University of Virginia.

But Couric obviously remembered him.

The Lillards had thought a lime-green sign would stand out, but there were a bunch of others among groups crowded around the small Rockefeller Center area. But this one proclaimed the presence of "your old 40th Street pal" and Couric found them.

"She said, 'Where's Tommy Lillard?' We kind of pushed him right up front there. She stuck her arms through and gave him a big hug," Kathy Lillard recalled.

Couric proceeded to chat with him and his family on national television. When she asked why he was in New York City, Lillard got to plug the Radford High School Choir's performance that night at Carnegie Hall, the second time choir director Lois Castonguay has taken the choir there.

Lillard's daughter, Rachel, was among the singers this time, which was why the Lillards were in New York along with their other children, Kevin and Kasey.

Couric reminisced on camera about games the neighborhood kids used to play and about crab apples.

The kids used to throw them at each other, Lillard explained on his return to work Wednesday.

"There wasn't a person in the neighborhood that didn't get hit with one of those crab apples."

He said Couric took part in ballgames along with the boys. They were together for bike rides, sledding, birthday parties, building forts and all the other things youngsters did, he said.

Their ball field was between two of the houses; first and second bases were sewer tops.

"If you hit Katie's house, it was a double. If you hit Katie's roof, it was a home run," Lillard said.

He said she comes by her news reporting honestly. Her father, who still lives in Arlington, had worked at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and United Press International in Washington, D.C.

And her parents expected her and her two sisters and brother to be serious about school, Lillard recalled.

"When we were playing baseball, they'd get called in to do their homework and we'd tease them."

Couric may have been a bit of a tomboy in her youth but, by high school, she was a cheerleader.

Her older sister, Emily, used to baby-sit for the Lillard family. Emily Couric became a Virginia state senator and died in 2001 from cancer. Katie Couric also lost her husband, Jay Monohan, to cancer in 1998.

Lillard had written a sympathy note at that time, not expecting a reply.

"She wrote the nicest note back," he said, signed "your pal/pest."

The Lillards were not sure what parts of their exchange with Couric were televised and which were not.

Kathy Lillard had met Couric's brother on trips to her husband's childhood home, but this was her first meeting with Couric. Although, like everybody else who watches "Today" regularly, she had gotten the feeling that she knew her.

She was not surprised when they really did meet. "What you see on TV when she's goofy, cuts up, that's just her," Kathy Lillard said.

Tom Lillard predicts success for her at CBS, which reportedly will pay Couric between $13 million and $15 million a year for the next five years.

He remembered one news story in particular during her time at "Today": the death of Dave Brown with six other astronauts in 2003 when the Columbia space shuttle broke up on re-entry.

Brown had been one of Lillard's high school classmates and was on the football team for which Couric had cheered.

"She had to cover that," Lillard said. "She has done hard news."