By Editor,Meredith Clark

Copyright dailymail

You have no idea the fire that you have ignited within this wife, the cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry,’ read Erika Kirk, resolute, bathed in the soft blue uplighting of her late-husband Charlie’s podcast studio.

‘No one will ever forget my husband’s name. I will make sure of it,’ she declared, voice quivering with emotion, just 48 hours after Kirk’s assassination.

Her first public remarks since accused gunman Tyler Robinson, 22, fatally shot her husband on September 10 – her piercing icy stare, her stern countenance – seemed extraordinary, even to those who know her best.

‘I could see in her face, she was just very, very angry and that’s just so not her,’ Erika Kirk’s long-time friend Chris Gillis, who met her in 2018 during a casting call for a Bravo reality show, exclusively told the Daily Mail.

On Thursday, Kirk, 36, was named CEO of Turning Point USA, thrusting her into a role at the top of the powerhouse right-wing organization that her husband co-founded 13 years ago. Sunday, the mother of two will once again command attention, as she speaks at her husband’s funeral at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.

The service is expected to draw nearly 100,000 people.

It’ll mark another stepping stone in Erika’s tragic transformation from ambitious Arizona pageant queen, to reality TV cast member, to leader of a movement.

‘She’s going to use this as a catalyst to propel herself and her cause to greater heights,’ said Chris’s brother Matt, who also became friends with Erika seven years ago. ‘It’s not going to defeat her. It’s just going to make her stronger.’

Indeed, she’ll likely need to be strong. Already, Erika has become the sharp focus of the mainstream media.

New York Times’ journalist Emma Goldberg, in an article headlined, ‘Grieving in Public, Erika Kirk Melds the Personal and Political,’ has forensically examined her mourning.

The first time that Erika was seen in public after Kirk died, she waved a rosary from an SUV. The next day, she posted photos of herself alongside her husband’s open casket, holding his yellowed, embalmed hands.

Perhaps, friends say, she has long been steeling herself for this

‘She just always believed in wanting to make a positive difference in the world,’ said Michael Spangenberg, another friend of Erika, who first crossed paths with her at a Phoenix Children’s Hospital fundraiser 12 years ago.

‘Erika’s like a sister to me. She is a unicorn,’ said Spangenberg, who is the co-founder of an apparel company aas well as a non-profit that helps small businesses in Arizona.

‘I’m not one to even get involved with politics, that’s not my thing at all, but you meet great humans and you just stick by them,’ he said.

Kirk, who was crowned Miss Arizona USA on her 23rd birthday in 2011, viewed the beauty pageant circuit as a vehicle to accomplish her philanthropic goals, we’re told.

She would go on to represent the state in the Donald Trump-sponsored Miss USA competition in 2012 but lost out to Rhode Island’s Olivia Culpo. Nevertheless, she had caught the bug.

Her pageant title took her all over the world with acting and modeling opportunities, eventually landing her in the Big Apple in 2015.

It was there that she was approached by a casting director for Bravo’s Summer House, a reality show that follows a group of young professionals who live in New York City during the week and party in the Long Island’s Hamptons on the weekends.

Erika appeared in the third season of the reality series, slotted in as a potential love interest for fellow Christian cast member Jordan Verroi.

Verroi declined to comment to the Daily Mail and representatives for NBCUniversal did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but a source close to production told the Daily Mail, ‘[Erika] was a delight. I cast her immediately. She was very smart, very put together, and she 100 percent understood the assignment.’

‘If she had wanted to go that route, she would have been great in the series,’ the source added. ‘She was very easy to work with. I think we paid her $500.’

Erika ‘always had TV ambitions and media ambitions,’ said Chris, who told the Daily Mail that Erika’s phone has been on Do Not Disturb since last Wednesday

Yet, presented with the opportunity to appear full-time on Summer House in 2018, she turned it down to focus on obtaining a juris master’s degree in law from Liberty University. And whether it was by luck or faith – she met her future husband.

It’s an encounter often recollected on her social media pages – how she applied for a job at Turning Point’s office in New York and met Charlie for an interview at Bill’s Bar & Burger in Manhattan.

As Charlie quizzed her on philosophy and religion during their interview, he said he realized she was ‘beautiful and smart and elegant and Christ-like,’ telling her, ‘Forget this job interview, I want to date you!’

They were engaged just two years later and married in May 2021. The couple’s daughter was born in August 2022, followed by their son in May 2024.

Before she became known as Mrs. Kirk, Erika Frantzve from Scottsdale, Arizona was raised in a tight-knit Catholic family, Erika was a self-described ‘tomboy’ who didn’t wear her first pair of high heels until she turned 14.

She played NCAA Division 2 women’s basketball at Regis University in Colorado for two years, but the beauty pageant circuit called her back home. She transfered to Arizona State University and graduated with a degree in political science and international relations.

As Turning Point USA became a leader in the rising youth conservative movement, with Charlie at its helm, Erika’s influence over the company’s brand also became undeniable.

She served as co-headliner alongside her husband at Turning Point’s Young Women’s Leadership Summit in June, which attracted roughly 3,000 women to a convention center in Dallas, Texas.

On stage, Kirk fielded questions from young women on relationships, faith and how to balance having both a family and a career.

‘Before I met Charlie, I was not on the path of ‘I want to have six kids, and a white picket house fence,’ she told the audience. ‘But this is how amazing God is. When you meet the right man, everything shifts. When I met Charlie, that was it. I could care less about a career.’

In a statement, Turning Point USA revealed that Kirk and her late husband had already decided that she was his heir apparent, writing: ‘In prior discussions, Charlie expressed to multiple executives that this is what he wanted in the event of his death.’

Now, as CEO, Kirk has pledged she’ll make Turning Point USA ‘the biggest thing that this nation ever seen.