Radio man Paul Harvey still going strong

By Maureen West
Arizona Republic

Talk about a positive outlook on getting older: Radio star Paul Harvey, one of the most familiar voices in the United States, last year signed a $100 million, 10-year contract with ABC Radio, even though he would be 92 years old when the deal ends.

At 82, Paul Harvey has signed a radio contract for another 10 years of his broadcast and has offers from other radio networks for deals beyond 2011. Gannett News Service

"If I still feel like 55, I'll consider other offers," says Harvey, 82, who broadcasts from his Phoenix home during the winter. Harvey is among the growing ranks of people breaking stereotypes about growing old.

As Harvey's famous line puts it, here's "the rest of the story . . . "

With homes in Chicago, Phoenix and St. Louis, Paul Harvey has a foot in three worlds, and a broadcast studio in each.

Wherever he is, he lives by the clock.

When in Phoenix, Harvey gets up at 3 a.m. each winter day and walks from his upstairs bedroom to the small broadcast studio down the hall in his home. He has been known to deliver his broadcast in his pajamas, though usually he puts on a white shirt and bola tie.

The homegrown broadcasts include "The Rest of the Story" and "Paul Harvey News and Comments." His programs air nationwide six days a week. He is heard by 22 million people each week, making him the most listened-to man in the medium, even more than Rush Limbaugh, according to ABC Radio Networks.

In the predawn, Harvey sorts, sifts and eliminates stories his staff in Chicago has culled from news wires, small-town newspapers and letters from listeners.

Harvey prepares his script on an electric typewriter — no computer. He has never missed a deadline, even when holding an icepack to his achy throat or suffering through a virus. He goes to bed at 6:30 p.m. to be fresh for the morning date with his listeners.

The rigor does not wear him down. He sees his work as the perfect job for someone with a good memory and who has had been on the front lines of history since the 1940s.

Started in 1930s

Harvey has been on the air for 68 years, since he was 14. In the early 1930s, a high school drama coach in his hometown of Tulsa, Okla., heard something in his voice. She dragged him to a local radio station where he did odd jobs and some on-air announcing. She had him do physical exercises before each broadcast; some of which he still performs.

From a long line of preachers, Harvey was soon on the air representing the virtues of small-town America. He moved to Chicago and soon drew network attention.

Harvey had a golden voice. But a news director told him he wouldn't get far without developing his own on-air personality, distinct from the voices already popular.

His terse, staccato tones and the stretched-out "Good day!" closings are now his trademarks.

"Some of his long pauses make you want to scream, 'Get on with it. What is it?' " says Michael Casavantes, who teaches radio news at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Telecommunication at Arizona State University.

Casavantes tells his students to study Harvey's mastery of pacing, inflection and delivery. Because of Harvey's style, Casavantes ranks him among great commentators like the late Edward R. Murrow, Howard K. Smith and Eric Sevareid.

'Beloved huckster'

People love to criticize his conservativism, but "he's tame compared to some of the shock jocks making a living on AM radio," says William Drummond, a professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.

Some have called him "America's most beloved huckster" because he seamlessly moves from news to pitching products, from dietary supplements to vacuums to adjustable beds.

But, in Harvey's defense, it's not offensive, Drummond says.

"He's a character," Drummond says. "Everyone knows he is going to be selling insurance or something."

Harvey says he never promotes products he doesn't believe in and turns down 10 for every one he accepts.

Keeping pace

Harvey's news commentaries over the years have ranged from politics to pop culture, from Winston Churchill to Puff Daddy.

"My biggest challenge is to keep intellectually articulate and pliable enough to adapt to and accept inevitable change," Harvey says. "I may not enjoy rap music, but I need to know about it and its function if I am going to deal with contemporary news."

An issue rarely stumps him. But these days he doesn't know what to do to stop school violence. "I'd like to offer some profound recommendation, but I don't know what."

Harvey used to be unchallenged as radio's top-ranked conservative, until an edgier radio personality, Limbaugh, started giving him competition with a virulent strain of what many consider near-hate politics. Harvey has not changed his style in response.

Robert Gunnison, of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC-Berkeley, says Harvey "doesn't live up to his conservative stereotype; he seems far more moderate."

Indeed, besides predictable conservative viewpoints, Harvey has had his share of liberal stands: support for the women's Equal Rights Amendment, for gay rights and abortion choice, and opposition to the Vietnam War.

Harvey sometimes takes heat from listeners who don't agree with him, as when he recently proclaimed that "Jesse Jackson has gone out of style."

His commentaries are unabashedly pro law enforcement, perhaps because his father was a lawman who died in the line of duty when Harvey was 3 years old.

If he is moderate on some issues, it often is because his wife suggests that he not kick a leader when he or she is down and that he consider the changing cultural context of issues.

Wife has key role

You can't talk about Harvey's success without mentioning his wife of 60 years, Lynne "Angel" Harvey. Although he has the voice that America knows, she has directed his career since he made $29 a week. She was his producer starting in the 1940s when it was unusual for women to be in broadcasting.

Concerned about the Phoenix area's unbridled growth, she sometimes chides him to talk on the radio about Arizona's scorpions and snakes instead of bragging on the warm winter weather and beautiful sunsets.

For sentimental reasons, they still own the car she drove the day they met: a 1938 Nash Lafayette coupe. They act like newlyweds in each other's company, and that is the way it has always been, says Russell Stamm, a 55-year-old Phoenix businessman who has known the Harveys all his life. Their families are close friends from Chicago. Stamm also is a good friend of their son, Paul Harvey Aurandt Jr., who writes "The Rest of the Story."

"Harvey loves the west and everything western," Stamm says. "Sometimes Paul puts on his cowboy hat and takes his Ferrari convertible out for a drive in the desert or around Phoenix."

Will Harvey ever retire?

"I don't know what I'd do if I really retired," he says. "Playing golf the way I do would be sheer torture."

Whatever he does, Harvey says he isn't interested in being among those who "walk old, talk old and think old."