Howard Stern

Background

Howard Allan Stern was born on January 12, 1954, in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens in New York City to Jewish parents. Stern’s father, Ben Stern, worked as a radio engineer at WHOM radio station and was the co-owner and operator at Aura Recording Inc., producing commercials and cartoons. Stern is America’s most prominent radio and television personality, comedian, and best-selling author is best known for his radio show “The Howard Stern Show.” Stern has had an interest in radio since the young age of five years old.

As a child, he frequently visited his father’s recording studio, where his desire to be on the radio grew. Down in the basement of their home, Stern’s father set up a microphone, tape machine, and turntable where Stern would host his make-believe radio shows. He attended Roosevelt Junior-Senior High School and later transferred to South Side High School, where he graduated in 1972. After graduating from high school, Stern enrolled in Boston University’s two-year College of Basic Studies course to improve his high school grades. During this time, he worked for the campus’s radio station, W.T.B.U., where he played records, read the news, and hosted interviews. He also hosted a weekly comedy show with two fellow students called “The King Schmaltz Bagel Hour.”

In 1974, after completing his Basic Studies course, he finally gained admission to Boston University’s School of Public Communications. In 1975, he studied for a diploma at the Radio Engineering Institute of Electronics in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Within the same year, he earned a first-class radio-telephone operator license issued by the Federal Communications Commission.

After earning his license, he got his first professional radio job at the W.N.T.N. radio station doing air shifts, news casting, and production work. Stern started working evening shifts at the W.R.N.W. radio station in New York the following year, in 1976, and later that year, he covered shifts over the Christmas break. His talent, dependability, and professionalism delighted the radio station, which employed him as a full-time host. He got hired as the radio station’s production director in 1977.

In 1979, he began working for W.C.C.C. radio rock station in Connecticut until 1980, when he started working as a morning host for The W.W.W.W. rock station in Michigan, which was also known as a struggling radio station that had low ratings at the time. His efforts to improve its ratings didn’t go unnoticed, as it won him his first award in the industry, a Billboard Award for ‘Album-Oriented Rock Personality of the Year For a Major Market.’

In 1982, Stern signed a five-year deal worth one million for afternoon shows at New York City’s W.N.B.C. adult contemporary radio station. Although Stern increased the afternoon show ratings, he got fired due to conceptual differences, which Stern believed to be a personal issue authority had about him. He did continue to advance professionally and earned a second five-year deal with Infinity Broadcasting to anchor afternoons on the rock station W.X.R.K. Stern began doing their morning show the following year, and by 1994, had the highest-rated morning radio show until 2001. During his 20 years working at W.X.R.X., Stern gained an audience of 20 million listeners. In 1990, he started hosting his own show, “The Howard Stern Show,” for two years, gaining much-deserved popularity. By 1992, he became the first radio host to have a number-one morning radio show in the New York and Los Angeles markets.

Stern achieved “New York Times” best-selling author status with the publication of his two books, “Private Parts” in 1993 and “Miss America” in 1995. Over a million copies of each book were sold, with great success. Stern was enshrined in the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2012 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018. “Howard Stern Comes Again,” Stern’s third book, was published in 2019. Stern wed Beth Ostrosky Stern in 2008, and they are still married. Stern began his first agreement in 2009 and is still a radio personality for Sirius Satellite Radio.