CHICAGO — Paul Harvey, the news commentator and talk-radio pioneer whose staccato style made him one of the nation’s most familiar voices, died Saturday in Arizona, according to ABC Radio Networks. He was 90.
Harvey died surrounded by family at a hospital in Phoenix, where he had a winter home, said Louis Adams, a spokesman for ABC Radio Networks, where Harvey worked for more than 50 years. No cause of death was available.
Harvey had been forced off the air for several months in 2001 because of a virus that weakened a vocal cord, but he returned to work in Chicago and was still active as he passed his 90th birthday. His death comes less than a year after that of his wife and longtime producer, Lynne.
“My father and mother created from thin air what one day became radio and television news,” Paul Harvey Jr. said in a statement. “So in the past year, an industry has lost its godparents and today millions have lost a friend.”
Known for his resonant voice and trademark delivery of “The Rest of the Story,” Harvey had been heard nationally since 1951, when he began his “News and Comment” for ABC Radio Networks.
He became a heartland icon, delivering news and commentary with a distinctive Midwestern flavor. He was credited with inventing or popularizing terms such as “skyjacker,” “Reaganomics” and “guesstimate.”
In 2005, Harvey was one of 14 notables chosen as recipients of the presidential Medal of Freedom. He also was an inductee in the Radio Hall of Fame, as was Lynne.
He composed his twice-daily news commentaries from a downtown Chicago office near Lake Michigan. Rising at 3:30 each morning, he ate a bowl of oatmeal, then combed the news wires and spoke with editors across the country in search of succinct tales of American life for his program.
At the peak of his career, Harvey reached more than 24 million listeners on more than 1,200 radio stations and charged $30,000 to give a speech. His syndicated column was carried by 300 newspapers.
Harvey was born Paul Harvey Aurandt in Tulsa, Okla. His father, a police officer, was killed when he was a toddler. A high school teacher took note of his distinctive voice and launched him on a broadcast career.
While working at St. Louis radio station KXOK, he met Washington University graduate student Lynne Cooper. He proposed on their first date (she said “no”) and always called her “Angel.” They were married in 1940.
“Hello, Americans!”
1,200: Radio stations nationwide that aired Paul Harvey’s broadcasts. He reached 24 million listeners every day.
How he opened his broadcasts: “Hello, Americans! This is Paul Harvey! (pause) Stand by for news!”
His signature ending: “Paul Harvey. (long pause) Good day!”
On the long pause: Harvey always said his trademark pauses were developed as “a lazy broadcaster’s way of waiting for the second hand to reach the top of the clock.” But they quickly became part of his on-air vocal style. “I’ve always felt the pregnant pause is more useful for emphasis than shouting,” he said.
His politics: Known for his staunch conservatism, Harvey supported McCarthyism in the 1950s. “There was a dirty job to be done, and it took a roughneck to do it,” he said later.
He blasted homosexuality, left-wing radicals and black militants at the time, and reportedly was a close second to Gen. Curtis LeMay to be running mate for unsuccessful third-party presidential candidate George Wallace in 1968.
But in 1970, Harvey shocked many of his listeners with his most famous broadcast. In the wake of Richard Nixon’s expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia, Harvey said: “Mr. President, I love you. But you’re wrong.”
