DES MOINES — Steve Lacy greeted me in his office as if we were old friends.

A top executive at the Meredith Corporation, he was a main driver of the company’s $2.8 billion acquisition of Time Inc. last November. With that deal, the 116-year-old Meredith Corporation became the largest magazine publisher in America.

When he spoke, it was clear Mr. Lacy took pride in Meredith’s unassuming corporate culture, so far removed from the New York magazine scene.

“In Des Moines, Iowa, we don’t have to prove anything to anybody about the Meredith Corporation,” Mr. Lacy said. “We don’t have drivers. We’d look silly, and it would be not in keeping with who we are.” He added, “I presume you know that if I want a black car, I can get one.”

Mr. Lacy, 63, is a trim man, born and raised in Kansas, with neat white hair. He steered me to a table by a large framed photograph of a bald eagle. Not far from his office on the 14-acre Meredith campus, a 24-foot sculpture of a trowel sticks out of the earth at an angle, as if tossed by a gardening giant.