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Good days for Paul Harvey

The radio newsman/pitchman's contract will keep him and producer-wife Angel busy into their 90s for $10 million a year. That's a lot of Neutrogena

By Rick Kogan | Tribune staff reporter

August 4, 2002

Among the most important words in the history of broadcasting are words you have never heard. This is what they are: "Me-me-mama-moo. Me-me-mama-moo."

A variation goes like this: "Wolf-one-two-three-four. Wolf-one-two-three-four."Or: "Diddle-de-diddle-de-dee. Diddle-de-diddle-de-dee."

They are said in a singsong way, like some silly children's ditty. But they are extremely important to the man saying them in a lush baritone. He is Paul Harvey, the most listened-to voice in the history of radio.

"Me-me-mama-moo. Me-me-mama-moo," he intones.

These vocal exercises take place minutes before each of his daily radio broadcasts, "Paul Harvey News and Comment," heard twice weekdays and once on Saturdays on some 1,100 radio stations across the country (locally it's on WGN-AM 720, which is a Tribune Broadcasting company) and on 400 Armed Forces Radio Network stations around the world. His "The Rest of the Story," written by his son, Paul Aurandt, also airs every day but Sunday. Each day more than 18 million people listen, hearing Harvey sign off the air with two words so familiar after more than 50 years and 36,500 broadcasts that they have become a kind of all-American catch phrase: "Good day."

Indeed.

What day wouldn't be good if you are a healthy and wealthy 83 years old, still go to work at a job you love and at which you are good, are still in love with a woman named Angel to whom you proposed on your first date more than 60 years ago?

Any day is a good day to be Paul Harvey, even if those days start at the ungodly hour of 3:30 a.m., which is when the alarm clock rings in the Harveys' 22-room home in west suburban River Forest. His routine never varies: brush teeth, shower, shave, get dressed, eat oatmeal, get into car and drive downtown. It all takes a well-organized 45 minutes or so.

He dresses formally--in shirt, coat and tie--as if going to work as the president of a bank, and in sharp contrast to the aggressively informal, sometimes slovenly manner common to most radio performers.

"It is all about discipline," Harvey says. "I could go to work in my pajamas, but long ago I got some advice from the man who was the engineer for my friend Billy Graham's radio show. He said that one has to prepare in all ways for the show. If you don't do that in every area, you'll lose your edge."

There are some in the industry who have begun to denigrate Harvey as increasingly given to factual errors in his broadcasts. Some will tell you that he has developed a "nasty" tone, especially when referring to anything having to do with the Clintons, "even Chelsea."

But none of these people are willing to go on the record with their opinions. And far more people in the business admire Harvey, cite him as an influence and regard him still as a powerful presence.

One of those admirers is Steve Edwards, the 31-year-old host of the magazine program "Eight Forty-Eight" on WBEZ-FM 91.5. "Paul Harvey speaks strongly to me from my own Kansas City childhood, tooling around in the back of my parents' station wagon," Edwards says. "I must have been 7 or 8 and was fascinated by his voice, the way he spoke with those long, pregnant pauses, and thinking, 'What's next?' Along with baseball broadcasts, he was what fueled my passion for radio."

But Edwards' feelings are not merely nostalgic.

"Beyond that youthful fascination, I appreciate him now. In this business there is a tendency to talk too much, to talk too fast. He reminds me that to be an effective communicator, you must understand the power of silence. I try to keep that in my mind when I am on the air, but I'm afraid I too often forget."

In his more than 60 years on the radio, Harvey has heard plenty of criticism and praise and assessment. He prefers to stay away from the whole issue. "What makes Paul Harvey tick? That question is better asked of the listeners," he says. "If I thought too much about it, it might be self-defeating." Instead, he goes about his business with that buoyant optimism that characterizes his broadcasts and his life.

"Let me say I can't wait to get up every morning and watch the passing parade and call out to anybody who might be interested in the things that interest me," Harvey says.

The Harveys rarely grant lengthy interviews and rarely have let reporters observe their routine. In part it has to do with the rigid nature of their schedules. In part it has to do with the fact that few reporters have asked; there's a tendency to take icons for granted. But who could ignore--especially those who question his popularity and his continuing ability to sell products--a news item from November 2000? That is when Harvey signed a contract with ABC Radio Networks that is paying him, at minimum, $10 million a year for the 10-year duration of the deal.

Though that did not make him the highest-paid voice in radio (Rush Limbaugh has a contract that pays him $31.2 million, and Howard Stern rakes in $23 million annually), it was still enough to give one pause, especially when it sank in that Harvey would be committed to his grueling schedule into his 90s.

What about that contract?