One to Watch

For 15 years, Angel Recci has been passionately involved in the St. Louis community, both in his roles as a leader in the corporate world and his extensive non-profit work, with an overarching goal: enrich the lives of Hispanic and Latino residents across the region. His work has given him a clear view of the city’s strengths, the opportunities it provides, and the extent of its potential. However, throughout that decade-and-a-half, he kept asking himself the same nagging questions. 

“Why are Latin artists not coming to St. Louis? Why do Hispanics and Latinos come to St. Louis but leave after one or two years? It’s not like that in surrounding cities like Kansas City, Indianapolis, Nashville,” Recci says. “I wondered why, and honestly, I took it personally because of all of the opportunities St. Louis has given me. I wanted to figure out the answer.”

Today, Recci not only has an answer to that question — he is part of the solution. After extensive research, community engagement, and soul searching, Recci realized that St. Louis’ lack of a Spanish-language media and entertainment ecosystem made the city seem like an afterthought to high-profile Latin artists. In turn, Recci says he knew Hispanics and Latinos who didn’t think they could live their lives to the fullest in St. Louis, forcing them to travel to other cities for entertainment and leisure. 

It also inspired Recci to change that narrative.

Currently, Recci is doing this work in two roles: He’s the market manager for local television station Telemundo St. Louis, which launched in 2023, and he’s the chief executive officer for APR Entertainment, the St. Louis-based event management and live music production company he founded in 2019. Through both companies, Recci is helping to build up the city’s Hispanic and Latino media and entertainment infrastructure in order to create community, positively impact the region’s economy, and attract prospective immigrants by showing them that the city is a place where they can live, work, and play. 

Recci fiercely believes in his adopted city and has since he moved here 15 years ago from Puerto Rico, via Maryland, to play baseball at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. During that time, he’d regularly accompany his uncle, Jaime Torres, to luncheons, meetings with civic leaders, and networking events, all with the purpose of helping to build community and create opportunities for the area’s Hispanic and Latino residents. His uncle instilled in Recci the importance of service, which was something he carried with him after graduating from college and working for Emerson. 

During his nine years with the Ferguson-based company, Recci rose through the ranks, beginning as an IT professional and working his way up to high level regional management and strategic planning positions. He thrived in his career, but he always took the time to be involved with the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Metro St. Louis and the Puerto Rican Society, Inc. in St. Louis. While working with the latter, Recci realized the strength of the city’s Hispanic and Latino population when people came together to raise money and supplies for Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017. Heartened by the sheer amount of relief the city’s community sent to the island, he saw firsthand how powerful they could be when they came together.

“That’s when I started to see that St. Louis is like this hidden gem,” Recci says. “There is something so special about this place; it’s hard to describe, but the community just comes together to support one another.”

While working at Emerson and with the Puerto Rican Society, Recci got his first taste of media work as the host of a local Spanish-language sports radio program on the Highland, Illinois-based station La Ke Buena. He loved the role, which opened his eyes to the power of media to create a shared experience for people, and he used his position to establish a relationship with the St. Louis Cardinals, which he saw as an important partner for the area’s Hispanic and Latino residents. 

In 2017, he again saw that power on display at a Latin American festival he and the Puerto Rican Society held at Kirkwood Park. The event was billed as a simple picnic, but to his surprise, over a thousand people turned out to celebrate, some even traveling from Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. He realized that there was a real hunger for media and entertainment opportunities that would allow the community to come together like this, and he was determined to fill the gap. 

However, it wasn’t just that the community was lacking an entertainment element. The more Recci explored what was missing, the more he understood that a multifaceted approach would be needed for St. Louis to show that it is the welcoming place for Hispanics and Latinos that he knows it to be. Finally, it hit him: The city needed a three-pronged approach, which he deemed a “media trilogy,” that would consist of Spanish-language radio, television, and entertainment. It was the missing piece he’d wondered about for all of those years. 

“You need television and radio to keep people informed and to let them know about what is going on and all things the city has to offer,” Recci says. “Also, Hispanics and Latinos are a hard-working sector, but we are so family-oriented, you have to have opportunities to have fun. That’s the play component of things. From here, I realized I had the structure of a business model.”

Recci’s first point of action was founding APR Entertainment with the goal of increasing St. Louis’ profile in the Latin music scene by putting on world-class concerts and events. APR’s initial events drew upon his connections with the St. Louis Cardinals; first was the wildly successful Fiesta Cardinales in 2022, which included a concert performed by popular salsa artists. That led to a special event with Roberto Clemente Jr. and another with Yadier Molina’s charitable organization, Fundacion 4. 

At this point, Recci realized that he wanted to devote himself full-time to serving his community through APR. He took the leap and left his job at Emerson, which allowed him to expand APR’s scope from an events production company into an organization with a bigger, service-oriented purpose.

“Our mission is to create opportunities that give St. Louis the exposure it needs to contribute to the growth of tourism and the economic development of the region through top-class multicultural entertainment events,” Recci says. “We want to help people see the opportunities St. Louis has to offer, and does offer every day.”

Through APR, Recci has produced well-attended concerts across the metro, including hosting two-time Latin Grammy-nominated De La Ghetto, who played at The Factory in Chesterfield last year. Producing events, he notes, is a major undertaking, so Recci assumed that APR would be the core of his work. However, another opportunity came up that was so aligned with his vision for creating a media and entertainment ecosystem he simply could not pass it up. 

A colleague he knew through previous nonprofit work connected him with SagamoreHill Broadcasting, a Telemundo affiliate based in Atlanta, Georgia, that was interested in expanding into St. Louis. Initially, he thought he would simply meet with the company to share his thoughts on his media-entertainment strategy. After he got to talking with the company’s leaders, it became clear that he might just be the right person to run the station. 

“I saw that having Telemundo here was going to be something bigger than we could do ourselves,” Recci says. “It would really make a change and an impact, and I wanted to be a part of that. It was clear to me that everything I had done and all (the) experiences that I went through with community and corporate work was literally preparation for this position. It was like all the pieces of everything I’d learned in life came together so I could really thrive and be successful.”

At the time Recci signed on to be Telemundo St. Louis’ market manager, the city was the only major metropolitan area in the nation without a Spanish-language television station. In fact, it was the only one of Missouri’s biggest cities that lacked a station, as Kansas City, Jefferson City, and Columbia, Missouri, all already had Telemundo affiliates. That was shocking to Recci, and since joining the station in April 2023, he has made it his goal to make sure that the St. Louis station not only thrives — he wants it to become the top performer of the affiliate’s media portfolio. It’s something the parent company feels is possible, too, after a heartening series of meetings with community and government leaders earlier this year.

“After listening to all of these leaders of the St. Louis region talking about one vision, (the Telemundo affiliate) was impressed,” Recci says. “They said it sounded like everyone talked together before our meetings about the same goal and objectives for the future of St. Louis, and that was incredible. They said they have never been in a market that is so synchronized to the same goal and objectives.”

Recci is thrilled that he’s seeing his “media trilogy” being realized, with his work at APR and Telemundo St. Louis serving as two prongs of the strategy. He’s equally excited that the third prong is also coming to fruition thanks in no small part to the work of his brother, Ricardo Recci Gonzalez, who is currently working with iHeartMedia St. Louis to start up a Spanish-language radio station. 

Despite all of his success so far, he emphasizes that he feels like his work is just beginning. Recci is confident that St. Louis will soon have the winning formula to become a world-class destination for Hispanic and Latino artists, media, events, and entertainment — an important achievement, and one that proves St. Louis is a place where Hispanic and Latino residents feel they can live the good life. 

“It’s exciting, and I cannot say enough how grateful I am because it is a true blessing to be part of something bigger that will not only impact the current generation, but generations to come,”  Recci says. “We are creating something that is going to make life better for families, students, and young professionals, give them a reason to stay, and make sure they can thrive.”

Editor’s Note: This is the second of two stories dedicated to APR Entertainment and its COO, Ricardo Recci Gonzalez, and its founder and CEO, Angel Recci. Read our first story, focused on Ricardo Recci Gonzalez, here.