![]() ![]() "I guess they wanted people to think I was available." "I remember when I worked in a rock-and-roll format, they didn't want me to talk about the fact that I was pregnant," she says. While she now regularly mentions her family, there was a time when the subject was strictly off limits. After graduating in 1977, she worked at a succession of small-town stations. Her first exposure to working in radio was doing a character voice in a sci-fi production at the college station at Western Michigan College in Kalamazoo. Oddly, the woman extolled for being herself grew up the fourth of five children of a small-town Michigan non-denominational minister, wanting to play other people as an actress. One guy said, 'She sounds like your sister.' People can sense this is a genuine personality. Moody adds, "When people talk about in focus groups, they describe her as sounding like a regular person. DeYoung is "not Annette Funicello." As evidence, he cites the time last year when she asked Kathy Mattea, Country Music Association female vocalist of the year winner, whether she and her $l husband, CMA songwriter of the year Jon Vegner, celebrated their awards "under the sheets." But that comment is as unusual as it is tepid more in keeping with her tone is the time she sympathetically spun the song "Old Folks" after a grandmother called to complain that her birthday had been forgotten.īut Mr. WPOC program director Bob Moody protests that Ms. We get along as well as anyone I've ever worked with." Morning news anchor Bill Vanko, who has worked with her for several years, says, "I'm not working with a morning 'star' in her eyes. "She's a neat lady."Īround the WPOC studios, she displays little evidence of the overblown ego that at times seems a requirement for a personality in morning drive, radio's most visible time slot. "I don't think there's negative stuff to say about her," says Myra MacCuaig, one of her closest friends. "She's a real genuine person."įriends use words like straightforward, passionate and loyal to describe her and take umbrage at the very notion that she may have flaws. "She is very much the way she comes across on the radio," says Ed DeYoung, her husband of 14 years. Those who know her best are quick to agree. DeYoung says, "I'm pretty much the same on the air as I am in person." ![]() "Is that the most self-absorbed thing or what?" she asks.Įxcept for being a little more upbeat on the air than she is off, and a little more sarcastic off the air than she is on, Ms. She is munching pretzels and sipping coffee out of one of the mugs with her name emblazoned on it that she gives away to callers to her show. "Just a reminder of the working woman trying to do it all," she observes. ![]() She is wearing a blood-red turtleneck and a pair of white jeans with a hole in the knee that she got from falling in the supermarket one day after work when she was laden with groceries. DeYoung - who at 35 is petite, dark-haired and attractive - is sitting in her office in WPOC's studios on the second floor of the Rotunda shopping center on a recent weekday morning, not long after she has gotten off the air. ![]()
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