by Malcolm Butler

 

The McKenney name is synonymous with radio in Lincoln Parish. And it has been for more than four decades.

In fact, the voices of Gary McKenney and his son, Matt, may be more well-known in the 318 than their faces. No surprise considering they have made a living behind a microphone, something that runs in the family.

The start to their story began over 1,500 miles across the country in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and 80 years ago.

Fast forward almost a century and three generations of McKenneys have spent their lives behind mics, inside control rooms and on the airwaves of small-town America. They have built a family legacy that stretches from the aftermath of World War II to the digital age of modern broadcasting.

What began with a former Air Force electrician named Bill McKenney eventually became a multigenerational radio tradition — one that continues each morning across North Louisiana as Matt McKenney signs on the air in Ruston.

And while technology has changed dramatically over the decades one thing has remained remarkably consistent: the McKenney family’s belief that local radio is still about people.

“It’s kind of funny because I never really set out to do it,” Matt McKenney said. “I don’t know that my dad really did either. I think it’s just one of those things where you grow up around it, you get a little job there and then you realize it’s fun. Then you just keep doing it.”

That family journey began nearly 80 years ago.

William “Bill” McKenney served in the armed forces during World War II, working as an electrician on bombers for the U.S. Army Air Forces. Following the war, he landed a job as an engineer in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, before eventually finding an opening at radio station KXRJ in Russellville, Arkansas.

He moved there in the late 1940s and never left the business.

“I remember Gary showing me pictures of his dad in a broadcast booth,” said Mary Poe, who worked alongside Gary in Ruston for almost four decades. “And then there’s pictures of Gary in the broadcast booth and there’s pictures of Matt in a broadcast booth.”

Bill worked as both an engineer and announcer at the station — later renamed KARV — for roughly five decades, becoming part of the golden era of local radio when stations served as the heartbeat of small-town communities.

Back then, radio was intensely local.

Stations carried local news, sports, swap-shop programs, live remotes and call-in shows that often sounded more like community gatherings than broadcasts.

Gary McKenney, Bill’s son, grew up in that environment.

“I would tag along and help him,” Gary said. “That station was newstalk and music. Music at night for the college kids. During the day, they had all kinds of talk shows.”

One of those programs was Bill McKenney’s wildly popular “Party Line.”

“Ladies would call up and swap recipes,” Gary said with a laugh. “Then they’d ask things like, ‘Hey Bill, how do you get runny dog poop out of the carpet?’ Things like that.”

The show became a snapshot of small-town radio at its most personal — informal, neighborly and deeply woven into daily life.

Gary officially entered the business around age 15 under unusual circumstances.

“There was a New Year’s Eve party everybody wanted to go to,” he said. “So they wanted me to work as ‘Silent Sam.’ I wouldn’t talk. I would just segue all the records. That was my inauspicious start.”

Like his son decades later, Gary never originally planned to make radio his career.

He worked his way through college at KXRJ while earning a biology degree with a chemistry minor and initially hoped to attend medical school.

“I didn’t get into med school,” Gary said. “At the same time, I was making a decent living as a DJ and thought maybe this was my career path. Of course, my dad told me I didn’t want to do that. But I did it anyway.”

After serving 90 days in the Army following college, Gary returned to Arkansas radio before a friendship with legendary Louisiana Tech broadcaster Dave Nitz altered the course of his life.

The two became close while working together in Russellville.

“Dave was doing high school games, and I was an announcer, and we kind of hit it off,” Gary said. “I spent a lot of time over at Dave’s house.”

Eventually, Nitz called Gary about an opening at KRUS in Ruston during the mid-1970s.

“They interviewed me over the phone,” Gary said. “Based on that and Dave’s recommendation, they hired me.”

Gary became the station’s morning host and copywriter, writing and voicing commercials during the day before later moving to KNOE radio in Monroe and eventually Jackson, Mississippi.

But Ruston kept pulling him back.

After a financially troubled station in Jackson collapsed, Gary called longtime Ruston broadcaster Dan Hollingsworth.

“Dan liked me and we had always worked well together,” Gary said. “So, I came back to KRUS in 1982, and I’ve been here for 40-something years.”

“I started working at the radio station the day after Mother’s Day, and about three weeks later Gary showed up with his wife and two kids,” recalls Poe.

Even retirement never fully stuck.

Gary officially retired in 2021 but still works part-time and remains closely tied to the station.

“He is Mr. Radio,” said Poe. “Nobody has a voice like him.”

Over the years, he also spent time alongside Nitz as a color commentator for Louisiana Tech football broadcasts during the mid-1980s.

“We had fun doing that,” Gary said. “Sometimes we flew around on James Davison’s plane. Most of the time, though, it was Dave’s crazy van with shag carpet and a CB radio.”

Like many longtime broadcasters, Gary accumulated countless stories from the unpredictable world of old-school radio.

There were overnight shifts where exhausted DJs accidentally fell asleep during broadcasts.

There were emergency food runs down fire escapes while long vinyl records played upstairs.

There was even the morning Gary walked into the station and found a preacher marrying a couple inside the control room at 5:30 a.m.

“You’re getting married in a radio station control room?” Gary remembered thinking. “This is the best you can do?”

There were live remote broadcasts from livestock auctions, golf tournaments and parades.

And there was the infamous story of broadcasters tossing old vinyl records from a third-story station window while coworkers stood below trying to dodge them.

“There’s a million stories in radio,” Gary said.

Matt McKenney grew up hearing those stories while also creating his own.

Now 46 years old and serving as operations manager for the Ruston station group, Matt remembers radio as simply part of everyday life.

One of his earliest memories involves his father portraying Santa Claus during a remote broadcast at a local hardware store.

“My little brother immediately realized it was Dad,” Matt said. “He just burst into tears and had to be removed. It wasn’t great for the remote broadcast.”

Matt also remembers riding through Peach Festival parades in station vehicles while beauty queens waved from convertibles.

“I used to love riding in parades and going to remotes,” he said.

Eventually, like Gary before him, Matt drifted naturally into the business.

While attending college in the late 1990s, he began working overnight shifts as a DJ.

Unlike modern automated radio, those overnight broadcasts still required manually loading each song into the system.

“We had computers, but they only told us what to play,” Matt said. “You still had to physically load every song. If you didn’t, there was dead air.”

The overnight schedule could be brutal.

Matt laughed remembering moments where he accidentally nodded off during overnight shifts.

“I’d wake up on the stool and realize nothing was playing,” he said. “Then I’d panic and just replay the same Shania Twain song again.”

At one point, Matt stepped away from radio and worked in restaurants for a while before eventually returning.

His explanation is simple.

“I figured out the microphone was lighter than the shovel,” Matt said.

Today, Matt still hosts the morning show from 6-10 a.m. while also overseeing operations for multiple stations.

And despite the endless scheduling, staffing and paperwork responsibilities, he said the live on-air portion of radio remains the best part.

“That’s the fun part,” Matt said. “I still like going live. I’ll have younger people ask why we don’t just prerecord everything, and I always think, ‘Isn’t it more fun to go live?’”

That connection to live local broadcasting remains central to the family’s identity. Even now, Matt says he still enjoys the simple recognition that comes with local radio.

“I’ll walk into the gas station and somebody will say, ‘You’re the guy from the radio,’” he said. “That never really gets old.”

The broadcasting world surrounding the McKenneys has changed dramatically since Bill McKenney first entered radio after World War II.

Gary witnessed the transition from vinyl records and fully staffed 24-hour stations to satellite programming and automation.

“Everything’s on computer now,” Gary said. “There’s no vinyl. There’s not even CDs.”

Still, the McKenneys believe the heart of the business remains the same. People still want familiar voices. They still want local personalities. They still want connection.

They want voices they trust. They want the McKenneys.

“Both of their voices are so recognizable — you can’t mistake them,” said Poe.

And perhaps most importantly, the family legacy may not be finished yet.

Matt’s 11-year-old son, Everett, has already begun occasionally appearing on-air to deliver weather reports and join conversations during broadcasts.

“There might be a fourth generation,” Matt said.

The possibility seems fitting.

After all, none of the McKenneys ever really planned on radio becoming the family business.

It simply happened one microphone at a time.

 

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