WBLI morning co-host Ally Ali competes on NBC's 'Password'

Ally Ali, co-host of “The Syke Morning Show” on WBLI/106.1 FM, trades her radio mic for a TV screen when she competes on the NBC game show “Password” Tuesday, paired with actor Lauren Graham.

“I didn't watch the original version with Betty White,” says Ali, 27, referring to the venerable word-guessing show that ran originally from 1961 to 1975 with some breaks, and resurfaced in variations three times afterward. “But I did watch [the regular 'Password' segment on] 'The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,’ when he has celebrities on. And even with my before-bed casual TV watching, those are always the videos that I would go to and it was, like, ‘Oh my gosh, it would be so much fun to do this.’ ”

When the segment spun off into its own prime-time show in 2022, hosted by Keke Palmer with Fallon as the regular celebrity player, Commack native Ali made competing on the show a life goal.

“I sent in a video last April,” she recalls, speaking by phone amid some shopping at the Smith Haven Mall, in Lake Grove, “and I was super excited to get the call the next day, where they were, like, ‘We want to push you through.’ So I had a few different rounds of interviews with producers and casting directors, and did a little bit of playing the game with other potential contestants, and they narrowed it down.”

Ali shot at Universal Studios in Los Angeles in November, the week after Thanksgiving. While the radio host was not a watcher of Graham’s 2000-07 mother-daughter dramedy “Gilmore Girls,” “my grandma, who passed away in August, apparently that was her favorite show. So when I told my mom that I was partnered with Lauren Graham, my mom was all excited.”

The daughter of retired electrical engineer Richard and homemaker Donna Ali, Alexandra Ali is the youngest of three siblings, with eldest child Robert and middle child Stephanie. She attended Commack High School and graduated from Hunter College, in Manhattan, with a degree in media studies and a minor in broadcast journalism.

While in college, she began interning for the West Babylon-based WBLI, and credits midday host Al Levine for mentoring her. Around late 2017 or early 2018, Ali recalls, she was hired for the station’s street team. “Basically the people who go out to parks and have a wheel people spin for prizes, that kind of thing, just representing the station.”

About a year later, she got on air. Her credits include the late-night “Ally Ali After Dark,” which ended on July 28, 2022, as she transitioned from her concurrent job as the station’s morning-show producer to become instead the new co-host of what had been “Syke & MJ in the Morning,” with Andrew "Syke" Sykora and Dana "MJ" Parisi.

True to her Commack roots, Ali is guest of honor at a viewing party set for 8 p.m. Tuesday at the hamlet's Prato 850 restaurant, being thrown by a trivia company with whom she works on the side, Carousel of Entertainment.

“Everyone will play different game shows,” she says, "like ‘Family Feud’ and ‘The Price Is Right,’ and then at 10 o'clock, the restaurant is actually staying open an hour later so we can all view the episode together.”