Ashley Marina’s journey on “The Voice” ended a little sooner than she would have preferred.
But the 18-year-old Kennedy Township resident has no regrets regarding her experience on the long-running NBC reality TV singing competition.
Marina, whose real name is Ashley Yankello, saw her bid to advance on Season 29 end on the March 23 installment of the show, when she came up short in her battle with Team Legend teammate Syd Millevoi.
“I wasn’t too sad,” Ashley said later that week. “It was an incredible journey – I met so many people.”
The silver lining is that because Ashley was eliminated at that point in the proceedings – the shows are recorded months in advance – she was able to pick up her studies at Belmont University in Nashville. Had she gone further in the show, she might have had to defer her enrollment until the spring semester.
As it was, Ashley missed a couple of fall semester classes while in California preparing for – and ultimately appearing on — “The Voice,” but she was able to pick things up quickly. So for now, she’s back to being a college freshman, putting the finishing touches on her first year as a commercial voice major.
Ashley said she feels at home attending school in Nashville, considered the country music capital of the U.S. Belmont is known for its music program, but many of its students are studying music business.
“The commercial voice major program is pretty small by grade level,” Ashley said. “I know most of the majors in my grade level. But there are a lot of people involved in it.”
Ashley considered enrolling at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she had attended a couple of summer sessions during and after graduating from Lincoln Park Performing Arts charter school, but she said the Nashville campus felt like a better match for her.
“Belmont has a beautiful campus,” she said. “And Nashville is a city of music. Everything is here.”
Ashley’s been working toward her major since her kindergarten days. She began exploring music as a 5-year-old, playing the piano and idolizing former teen sensation Justin Bieber. “I pretended I was in his music videos,” she recalled.
Ashley was no pretender; in addition to taking up piano, she began writing her own songs at the age of 10. Admittedly, her first effort wasn’t hit material, but that didn’t deter her from working at it.
“It encouraged me to keep writing,” she said. “The more you do it, the better you get at it. The more you write, the more interlocked you are with your emotions – what you actually feel. And the stronger that skill becomes.”
That ability to weave her emotions into a song became apparent to millions of people during Ashley’s first brush with national TV exposure. That came on another NBC show, “America’s Got Talent,” when Ashley was just 12. She was making her way through her audition song when one of the show’s judges, Simon Cowell, interrupted her with a few choice comments about her song choice. It happened again on her second attempt, but she earned a third shot, this time with an original song – a tribute to her father, Mark Yankello, titled “You’ll Always Be My Hero.”
The judges, including Cowell, were wowed by the song, which earned Ashley a standing ovation.
“He pulled a number on her,” Yankello recalled, referring to Cowell’s interruption of Ashley.
“But Sofia Vergara said, ‘Why not let her come back and do something else?’ When she came back with her original song, it blew everyone away. It made for great TV.”
The headline on the Huffington Post’s UK site from Sept. 19, 2020, reads “Simon Cowell Asks 12-year-old Girl to Change Song Twice Onstage. Girl Keeps Her Cool.”
“Ashley Marina didn’t crumble,” the first line of the story reads.
Today, Ashley doesn’t dwell on that episode, instead noting that what followed proved to be even more challenging.
That would be the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I filmed my audition episode right before COVID,” Ashley recalled. “Then COVID happened. They had to cut down the (“America’s Got Talent”) show a lot – they cut 70% of the people. I didn’t even get to perform the second round. It was very disappointing.”
But Ashley admitted that it might have been a blessing in disguise. “It would have been a lot of pressure,” she said. “I was 12.”
Ashley knew even at that young age that she wanted to pursue singing, songwriting and performing, and both her father and her mother, Nina Yankello, were onboard.
“She’s been working at this since she was 7 years old,” Mark Yankello said. “This is all she’s ever done. She never played sports – it was just singing since she was 7.”
Ashley’s family lived in Stowe Township until she was 4, then they moved to Kennedy, where her parents and her younger brother, Roman, 15, continue to live. Ashley attended the former Forest Grove Elementary School through fourth grade and David E. Williams for grades 5 and 6. She then began attending Lincoln Park in the seventh grade and graduated from high school there in 2024.
Ashley took a gap year after graduating from Lincoln Park and spent it working on her music. She already has 32 original song releases that can be heard via Spotify and YouTube, and her song “You’ll Always Be My Hero” has racked up more than 100 million streams across all platforms. According to her website – www.iamashleymarina.com – her cover of “Talking to the Moon” has garnered more than 2 billion streams across platforms.
She has performed on stages such as New York City’s Apollo Theater and Disney World and has also displayed her talents in numerous other venues.
Ashley considers her music to fall in the folk-country genre and numbers Joni Mitchell among her big influences. “I love her because of her songwriting,” she said of Mitchell, the 11-time Grammy Award winner whose spectacular career has spanned seven decades. “Her music is so beautiful and intricate.”
She’s also a fan of such singers as Lizzie McAlpine, Kacey Musgraves, Jeff Buckley and Lady Gaga – particularly during her “A Star is Born” period – and enjoys listening to the band The Marias.
Her preferred style of music didn’t mesh all that well with the song that she had to sing with her Team Legend partner Millevoi on the battle round of “The Voice.” The Mariah Carey song “Love Takes Time” was a better match for Millevoi, Ashley said.
“She has a huge Mariah Carey-type of voice,” she said. “It was very hard for me – I came from doing a country song and I was a little caught off guard. Singing Mariah Carey is incredibly hard.”
Ashley said she has no hard feelings for Millevoi. “She’s incredible and so nice,” she said of the 23-year-old New Jersey native. “We spent a lot of time together.”
The coaches had their share of compliments for Ashley after that battle round.
“I did feel there are some pitchy parts here and there,” Kelly Clarkson said. “Also some beautiful moments. When your voice gets really big, and you open up that roundness, it’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful big old sound.”
Said John Legend: “Ashley, you really do have an amazing voice. When you have this powerful instrument, part of what you’re doing is learning how to harness it and controlling this gift you have. It just takes time. As Mariah said, ‘It takes time.’”
Mark Yanello said that watching her daughter come up short in the battle round was “a little tough.” He said the song chosen for the two Legen teammates to perform “was a little outside the zone of what Ashley typically does. We were like, ‘Why did they go with that?’ But you just have to go with it. She did her best.”
The result didn’t take away from the excitement of Ashley’s triumphant appearance during the blind audition telecast, in which contestants perform for the three coaches whose backs are to the performer. If one of the coaches likes what they hear, they press a button and their chair rotates, indicating they want the singer on their team.
The Yankello family was able to witness Ashley’s blind audition in person. The family was brought into the studio just before Ashley was about to perform and sequestered in a small area.
“There were people everywhere,” Mark Yanello recalled. “It was like a championship boxing event. They put us in front of a TV, and all we could see was Ashley’s back.”
They certainly could hear her, though. Ashley’s rendition of Keith Urban’s “Tonight I Wanna Cry” elicited a triple chair turn, meaning all three coaches swung around less than 30 seconds into her performance to indicate they wanted her on their team.
Ashley said she felt good as she started into the song. “I thought, ‘I got this.’” When they all turned around, I just went blackout. I didn’t remember anything. I just thought, ‘My goodness – what’s happening?’”
She ultimately chose to compete for Legend’s team over the teams of Clarkson and Adam Levine, basing that decision on the fact that Legend is a “true musician.”
“He’s an incredible pianist and a great songwriter,” she said. “Even though his music isn’t the same genre as mine, I felt I could learn a lot from him.”
The decision was not an easy one, though. “I would say Kelly Clarkson is more in my genre,” she said. “She is incredible but I knew anyone who was really good would want to be on her team. So I was concerned I’d have to battle them in the next round. But I almost got swayed (by Clarkson). I really liked talking to her.”
Ashley said she had a chance to work with more than half an hour one-to-one with Legend. “It was really cool,” she said. “But trying to practice right in front of a celebrity was really nerve-racking.”
Ashley’s mother, Nina, called the entire time in Los Angeles “a crazy experience. There were so many emotions, from the blind audition to the battle round. Every little thing is crazy. There are no words for that. It was very emotional.
“You’re thankful – I’m thankful for the opportunity Ashley was given. It’s a huge opportunity and I’m very proud of her. At the same time, it’s your kid and you feel for her. You know she put a lot of work and dedication into it. But you have to get rejected so many times so you can succeed in life.
“This is not the end. She’ll continue to work hard.”
Ashley said she’s looking forward to performing this summer in and around Pittsburgh.
“I’m really excited,” she said, noting that she would either be performing solo or with her brother, Roman, who plays the keyboard and sings and is “very into production.”
All of this is with an eye toward her ultimate goal — to be a successful live performer.
“One of my goals is to get my music heard,” she said. “I hope that I make pretty good music, and I need people to hear it.”
Fans can follow Ashley on multiple social media platforms – YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X at Iamashleymarina
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