Ernest's father is theatre director Giedrius Mackevičius.

[1] Mother Marina Mackevičienė is a journalist with the newspaper Vechernyaya Moskva.

He studied on the same course with his future colleagues on the NTV Vladimir Lensky, Sergey Gaponov, Vyacheslav Grunsky, Sergey Dedukh, Andrey Cherkasov, Alexander Khabarov and Vladimir Chernyshev.

He also studied for some time on the same course with Andrey Malakhov[5] and Dmitry Lesnevsky,[6] who, due to various circumstances, graduated from the university later.

He has worked in television since 1991, starting as the TV company VIDgital correspondent.