I don’t do Spotify. I don’t stream Apple Music. When Alexa asks me if I want to sign up for Amazon music, I ignore her, even when she offers me a 90-day free trial of all my favorite music. I know how 90-day free trials turn into $9.95-a-month subscriptions in a hurry.

I was born and bred to listen to the radio Chicago style. There were WCFL and WLS in my grammar school years. I spent many Fridays walking down Morse Avenue to the local record store to collect their music surveys and see what was at #1. WDAI (pre-disco) and The Loop, along with a taste of WGN, were my companions early in my professional career. Next, The Drive held my attention for a few years but by the late 2000s I had morphed into a WXRT listener, and for the most part, remain that way today.

Behind the radio call letters and station names have been the varied personalities I have listened to. Each epoch had a jock or two who kept me listening, even after the music had stopped. In some cases, they didn’t play much music at all, and that was OK too.

I’ve spoken before about Joel Sebastian, the smooth morning man at WCFL, and later at many other Chicago stations. When Chicago radio, and my own tastes, evolved, I discovered Steve Dahl in his early solo days. I didn’t know what to make of his humor and stunts, but by the time he paired with Garry Meier, I was hooked on his style of very personal radio. I couldn’t have guessed then that his wife Janet’s school board adventures would be a forerunner of my own.

Dahl and Meier served me well on my morning commute, but once I reached my hospital laboratory office, I tuned in to a more “work-appropriate” radio format with my radio-wave friend Roy Leonard. Sadly, I think that I won more radio call-in contestants on Roy’s show than I answered questions correctly during my one Jeopardy! appearance. I finally had the opportunity to meet Roy before a show at Chicago’s Second City–and yes, I was there after winning the tickets for the performance on Roy’s show.

Mr. Leonard was followed on WGN by the combo of Kathy O’Malley and Judy Markey. I presumed I was the only male in their radio audience–a feeling reinforced when a male oncologist friend reviewing some slides at my microscope asked how I could listen to those babbling idiots. I think his chauvinism was peeking through.

And then came everybody’s best friend in the whole world, Lin Brehmer. When my daily morning commute doubled in length with my new company and new position, I fell into WXRT. I timed my drive so that I would arrive at the lab just in time for Three for Free, Lin and Mary Dixon’s morning musicology quiz, battling it out with Mailman Jack, Brad Frey, Cathy Chouinard, and many others. Lin’s death felt to all of us like the loss of a valued and loved co-worker.

Lin was my man at ‘XRT, but a shout-out to Terri Hemmert, who last week celebrated 50 years on WXRT with a Saturday Morning Flashback to the year 1973. That was a good year with great music, and even better memories.

Long live Chicago radio–I hope it never goes away.

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