Hollister resident Bill Kelly takes to the airwaves on morning
radio show
Every morning, radio personality Bill Kelly wakes up with the
same thought in his head.
”
I get out of bed and the first word out of my mouth begins with
the letter F,
”
he joked.
”
Honestly, waking up that early is working against nature.
They’ve actually done studies about it. Your body knows that you
are supposed to be asleep when it is dark.
”
Hollister resident Bill Kelly takes to the airwaves on morning radio show
Every morning, radio personality Bill Kelly wakes up with the same thought in his head.
“I get out of bed and the first word out of my mouth begins with the letter F,” he joked. “Honestly, waking up that early is working against nature. They’ve actually done studies about it. Your body knows that you are supposed to be asleep when it is dark.”
Kelly, a Hollister resident since 1997, is one half of the Bill and Marla morning show on Mix 106.5 FM (KEZR), a San Jose radio station with a Top 40 play list. Their show broadcasts live Monday through Friday from 5 a.m. to 10 a.m., meaning Kelly wakes up around 3 a.m. to arrive at the station by 4 a.m. to prepare for the day’s show.
“I’ve always been in radio, and I’ve pretty much always done mornings,” Kelly said. “All my jobs have been in radio. It’s the only thing I’ve ever done. OK, that’s not exactly true. The only other job I’ve had was as a paper boy growing up in Long Island. Just me and a bike and a basket full of rolled up newspapers. Today it’s old men in station wagons.”
Kelly’s personality is pretty much the same whether he’s on air or off – he likes to joke, but is also a straight shooter. He’s a casual sort of guy who wears shorts and tennis shoes to work and is constantly amazed at the stupid things celebrities do in their spare time. He considers meeting his fans, one of the perks of his job.
“I get to meet and talk to a lot of cool people, not just celebrities, but regular people,” he said. “We do a lot of stuff with listeners on the phone. It’s fun. It’s probably the best thing about the job.”
Kelly and his wife, Michelle, came to the Bay Area from the east coast in 1983 so that Kelly could take a job with a Gilroy-San Jose FM station, KWSS. He became part of the Kelly and Kline morning show, staying there until the station closed in the early 1990s. From there, Kelly went to a San Francisco station, X100 FM until they changed formats a few years later.
“It’s kind of sad, but every station I’ve ever worked at has either closed or changed formats,” he said with a laugh. “It’s true of every single station, and I’ve worked at stations across the country. Some are playing polkas now, others broadcast in Spanish. If you want to close a station down, call Bill Kelly. I’m your man. I’m the closer. It’s just a coincidence. Really.”
When his San Francisco stint ended, the Kellys moved back east, settling in Connecticut, where Kelly found work for the next five years with another morning show gig. But, after suffering through back-to-back years of “the worst winters on record in Connecticut, ever,” Kelly decided to look for work on the west coast in 1997.
“My wife is not crazy about all the moving,” Kelly said. “But she’s in media, also, so she kind of understands.”
Kelly landed a job at KEZR, and he began looking for a new home. He was surprised to find the real-estate market had changed drastically in the five years they had been gone.
“I came back and I couldn’t afford to even look at the house I’d owned before,” he said. “Someone told us we should look at homes in Hollister. I didn’t know too much about it. We had relatives living there and had been there a few times, but had never spent that much time there.”
With Michelle still back east, the task of finding a home fell to Kelly. He came out to Hollister, met with a realtor and began looking at available houses.
“The homes were affordable and I really liked the place,” he said. “It’s the perfect little town. Everyone knows everyone else. Everyone is friendly. The high school’s marching band practices right in front of our house, and we’ll try to figure out what song they are playing. Hollister is just really, really nice.”
Although Kelly generally keeps a fairly low-key presence around town, this year he served as one of the announcers, along with Suzanne St. John-Crane, of the Hollister Downtown Association’s Lights On Parade.
“That was cool,” he enthused. “I loved it. I’d been as a spectator, but I’ve never announced a parade before. I loved the little mini garbage trucks. I screwed up Santa’s intro, though. Here I am, saying ‘look, there are Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus,’ and they were still a block away. Oh, well. What are you going to do?”
Kelly enjoys working with his morning show partner, Marla Davies. The pair works well off each other, as Kelly’s low-key but occasionally excitable manner plays nicely against Davies’ more animated tone.
“Marla is great, without a doubt. She’s loud and opinionated, and those are two of her good points,” Kelly said. “She’s a contrarian, in that she is contrary to me. Sometimes she surprises me with the things she says and does.
“That I get paid to do this is awesome,” he continued. “If I had to have a job where I couldn’t wear shorts to work or had to sit in a cubicle staring at spreadsheets and numbers, I’d kill myself.”
Kelly says he enjoys meeting his fans, and is happy that Mix 106.5 seems to be popular among many Hollister residents.
“It’s nice that people listen, but I don’t fool myself into thinking it’s that our morning show is that great. It’s one of the only stations you can get in Hollister,” Kelly said, making one last joke. “Actually, a lot of people will come up to me and say they listen to our show and the radio station. God bless them.”
