From Radio DJ to an MS Diagnosis: The True Story of Kid Curry

And the guy behind her says, Well, if it isn't Kid Curry.

And I thought, wait a minute, there was a TV show called Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Kid Curry and Hannibal Hayes.

It was on TV.

And Kid Curry was a fictitious gunfighter.

And it was kind of, it was a show that people were watching back then.

And my friends would make a would make fun of me and call me, hey, Kid Curry.

So I didn't like that name.

So when he says, Well, if it isn't Kid Curry, I said, sorry, man, I hate that name.

And he says, Well, then I won't sign your check.

And I said, Kid Curry, it is.

SPEAKER_01: Hey, I'm Kevin Lowe, the host of The Lowdown with Kevin Lowe.

Here on the podcast, my aim is to show you the world through blind eyes.

And my hope is that you leave feeling inspired, motivated, and excited to take on the day.

Hey, welcome back to the podcast.

This is episode number 39, and today I am joined by none other than radio legend Tid Curry.

Tid, well, that's what he used to be known by back in the day when he was blowing up the airways on radio.

But today he goes by Tim Curry.

Although I don't think he would uh have anything wrong with you still calling him Tid Curry.

He is on the podcast today because he has a new book that he's read.

He took those skills that he had on the radio and turned them into a new passion, and that is writing.

After 33 years on the radio, he was diagnosed with MS and literally had to be pulled away from the recording studio and microphone.

But what most would consider a disability, Tim is turning into an opportunity to bring awareness to living a full life with MS.

The man was absolutely incredible to have on the podcast.

As you listen, I think you'll realize what I'm talking about.

Because this is gonna be not like one of my past podcasts, because he makes it so fun that literally it's like you're sitting back listening to a movie play out.

And it's absolutely amazing.

Okay, before we dive into the uh meat and potatoes of today's episode, I've gotta give a shout out to fellow podcaster Sam Mitchell.

Sam, he is the host of Autism Rocks and Rolls.

And let me tell you, he is killing it.

He's still in high school, yet his podcast is blowing up the charts.

Sam was diagnosed with autism young as a child.

And you know what though?

He has not let that stop him whatsoever.

You need proof of this?

You need to go check out Autism Rocks and Rolls to see what he's doing.

I'm talking about big name celebrities, heads of universities are coming on his podcast.

And it's absolutely inspired.

Be sure to check out the show notes where you can find a link to Autism Rocks and Rolls.

Be sure to give my man Sam a shout out.

Okay, let's get on with the show as we catch up with Kid Kirby.

SPEAKER_00: My dad came home when I was in a uh senior in high school.

He came home one day and he said that he was a news guy and a sales guy at the only radio station in my hometown in Canyon City, Colorado.

And he came home one day and he said, the general manager wants you to babysit.

Can you babysit this weekend?

I said, sure, no problem.

So I he said, well, just go to talk to the GM at the radio station, he'll tell you what to do.

So when I got to the station, the guy said, I was expecting to either pick up his kids or learn what I was supposed to do to go babysit his kids.

And he said, No, I want you to babysit the God show.

And I was, excuse me.

So on Sunday morning, the radio station, because it was the only one in town, would record all the church services.

And then on Sunday morning, they would play all the church services back on Sunday morning from the previous week.

And nobody wanted that job.

So they hired a high school kid.

And that was me.

But you know, the first time I heard my voice on the radio, I remember exactly what I said because it was the station identification at the radio station at the time.

And it said, this is KRLN Canyon City, Colorado, the station with the news reputation.

And when I heard my voice through my little headphones, I thought, huh, wow, that was really neat.

So that got me started.

About a year later or so, I was at the University of Southern Colorado.

Back then they called it SCSC, Southern Colorado State College, but it became the University of Southern Colorado.

I went to school there for about two and a half years and studied broadcasting.

And I was actually a music major.

I was a trumpet player, but radio was in my blood.

Once you get started, it just, you know, took over my whole life.

SPEAKER_01: Well, I was gonna say, you know that you were you were born for this because what you said goes against what most people believe.

And that is when somebody hears their own voice, most of us absolutely cringe and wonder how in the world can people even stand to talk to me?

While you, on the other hand, are like, oh my gosh, that sounded amazing.

SPEAKER_00: Bingo, this is fun.

No, but you know, I too, I can tell you that I struggle with that very same thing, Kevin, and I studied it in college.

I there's a reason why that happens, is because as humans, we hear ourselves from the inner ear.

And so when you put a set of headphones on, you're suddenly hearing yourself from the outside, and your voice is immediately foreign, and it's like, what is that?

So there's a reason we hear ourselves from the inner ear.

SPEAKER_01: That's so interesting.

So interesting.

Yes, and and so I'm I'm curious.

So you started doing the radio, started babysitting this this Sunday morning radio show.

And so then you you went to college, and then tell me, kind of where did that go from there after college?

SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, I was a pretty well, you know what?

I was the first freshman in the school's history to be assigned as program director of the radio station.

So in the year time from I started in my hometown in Canyon City until I got until I got to college, I became obsessed and I learned as much as I could.

And I impressed the head of the communications department, and he made me the program director as a freshman.

And I really didn't even know what I was doing.

I was like, oh yeah, you know, I'm a radio DJ, you know.

So so I did that for about two and a half years and worked part-time at a local radio station there.

And back in the day, in the 1970s, you you couldn't call a guy Kim.

I grew up being harassed because my name was Kim, but my parents gave me the initials, Casey.

So that's my my Kim Curry is my initials.

So my friends called me that.

So I got away from being Kim.

But when I got my part-time job when I got to college, the radio station said, Well, we can't call you Kim on the radio station, so we need to come up with another name.

Now, there was always a major announcer, some guy who came into town who would voice all these liners for the radio station.

And this guy came to town and I was in the office on the day that he was there.

And uh the program director said, Well, we can't call this guy Kim.

We got to call him something else.

And he looked down and he saw, he saw a record, and he picked it up and he said, Okay, the guy who wrote the Monster Mash, his name is Gary Paxton.

We'll call you Gary Paxton.

So I got my first radio name was Gary Paxton.

And uh later in life, you know, he ended up marrying Tammy Faye Baker.

Anyway, never mind.

That is so funny.

How would I know that?

Because someone named me Gary Paxton.

So now, so I'm in college about two and a half years, and I wanted to start applying.

I really felt my had my radio Jones, you know, I was ready to go, and I thought that I would start applying for jobs around the country.

And I got an offer to go to Knoxville, Tennessee to a radio station called 15Q.

So I left college, packed up everything I had in my Plymouth Valiant, and uh drove across the country.

And as I'm driving across the country, I thought, you know, I can't call myself Gary Paxton.

I need to come up with a unique radio name because I was gonna be on the radio at 10 p.m.

And back in those days, you had the Wolfman and uh the Boogeyman and Dr.

Brock and all these great names.

And I thought, well, I'm gonna come up with a name for 10 o'clock at night.

So I thought, hmm, I'll call myself Night Smoke.

Come on.

You gotta stop laughing.

Okay, so so so, and I'm just driving across the country thinking when I get there, I'm gonna be Night Smoke.

So I get to the radio station, I drive up, and I I there's the front door, and I walk up the stairs and I open the door, and there was a lady at the receptionist desk, and behind her was this big fat guy, and he had a Hawaiian shirt and curly hair.

He was out of control.

And I didn't think anything about him.

I reached out my hand to the receptionist lady and I said, Hi, I'm your new nighttime disjunk.

Yeah, I'm Night Smoke.

And the guy behind her says, Well, if it isn't Kid Curry, and I thought, wait a minute, there was a TV show called Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Kid Curry and Hannibal Hayes.

It was on TV.

And and Kid Curry was a fictitious gunfighter.

And it was kind of it was a show that people were watching back then, and my friends would make a would make fun of me and call me, hey, Kid Curry.

So I didn't like that name.

So when he says, Well, if it isn't Kid Curry, I said, sorry, man, I hate that name.

And he says, Well, then I won't sign your check.

And I said, Kid Curry, it is.

That's how I got the name, Kid Curry.

SPEAKER_01: Wow.

Oh, wow.

Okay, so now I have to say, I like Kid Curry so much more than Night Smoke.

I think he knew what he was doing.

SPEAKER_00: He, and you know what?

And strangely enough, a few years later, I got a copyright on that name.

And so for years, well, until today, there's never been another Kid Curry on the radio in America.

There's a whole bunch of Bill Tanners and John Walsh's and Jack Stevens, and but there was only one Kid Curry, and it was me, and it was this guy.

And so, you know, that was really good.

I really enjoyed that, and it really made me who I was.

About six months later, actually a week after I got the name Kid Curry, he fired the program director.

So he fired the guy who hired me.

So now I'm like, now what am I gonna do?

So, you know, radio at night in Knoxville, because this was a very small radio station, I would come up with the goofiest things to do.

And I'm you had to make air checks.

We'd make these tapes of just our our our bits we did on the radio, and we'd send those out around the country.

And that's how we auditioned for a job.

So one night I was on 15Q and I was getting ready to play the Peter Frampton song, Baby I Love Your Way.

And if you go back far enough and listen to it, it starts with a pause and he goes, Thank you.

So I'm thinking in my head, what if I said, Hey Peter, your zipper's down?

And he goes, Thank you.

So I do this little thing where you hear this little applause start, and I say, Hey Peter, your zipper's down.

And he goes, Thank you.

I'm 15Q.

Here's Peter Fremdett.

So I put that thing, that one little moment, on a tape and I sent it around the country.

But there was a guy in Miami, a guy that I had no clue who this guy was, but there was a guy in Miami who called, it was the weekend of Labor Day.

It was 1976.

There was a huge boat thing going on in New York Harbor.

My then roommate and I were sitting on the couch watching this goofy thing, and the phone rings, and he picks the phone up and says, hello.

And then he looks over at me and says, and I'm not going to swear here.

He says, It's Jerry Clifton, and he wants to talk to you.

Now, what I got from that was what I knew.

The guy who picked up the phone was a much better radio DJ than I was.

And he was insulted that this legend, Jerry Clifton, was calling and didn't want to talk to him.

He wanted to talk to me.

So I took the phone and I'm like, yeah, you're who?

Jerry.

Okay.

I had barely heard his name.

I didn't know who he was.

And he said, Well, I need you to come down here tonight.

There's a plane ticket waiting for you to Knoxville Airport.

And I want you to come down to Miami tonight to talk to me about working at 96X.

And okay, I'm a little Colorado boy.

Grew up in Colorado, and I and I and the plane door opens in Miami, and I had never felt humidity.

It hits you like a blanket.

What was that?

And it smelled, it smelled like dead fish.

I mean, it's Miami.

I mean, it's what happens now.

Well, well, welcome to Florida.

Yeah.

So, you know, I come to find out, this guy sits there and he says, you know, I get tapes from all around the world.

I people want to come to work on this radio station.

And at the time, Miami was the epicenter of top 40 radio in America.

There was a transition from when AM radio played top 40 music and then FM radio started playing top 40 music.

So for years, FM was full of all these esoteric dudes doing then.

Before that, we had, and then we suddenly put top 40 music on FM, and you had all these strong top 40 radio stations on FM.

And Miami was the epicenter.

It was one of the first markets where this happened.

So you have Jerry Clifton who hires me.

And I didn't know at the time, but Jerry Clifton was one of the real trendsetters.

So he hires me to come to 96X.

I'm there for six months.

And I learned that the radio station had done an illegal contest years prior to this.

What they had done is they had gone on the radio and then said one of their DJs was lost in the Bermuda Triangle.

unknown: Okay.

SPEAKER_00: Now you can say that, but you can't put it in the news as a news story when it's not true.

SPEAKER_01: Yes.

SPEAKER_00: They did that.

So he ends up getting dismissed from the radio station six months after I'm there.

And now once again I'm flailing.

Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, what am I gonna do?

My second boss is gone.

But now, at the for the six months I was there, I got a college education.

I was working with some of the legends in the radio business, Lee Logan, Frank Reed, who ended up doing middays.

He was on WNBC after Howard Stern and before Don Imus.

John Lee Walker, legendary radio DJ out of California, and Eric Rhodes, who is a very famous man, uh, had Radio Inc.

If you're a radio person out there, you've heard the magazine Radio Inc.

Well, he he was the first one to put together that magazine and has since retired from there and has become an artist, a world-renowned painter, an artist.

So I get this radio education in six months.

So my brain is once again turned on.

I want to go work somewhere big.

I want to go to Philadelphia, I want to go to Chicago, I want to, you know.

But the competition in 96X was a radio station called Y100.

Now, in the top 40 world in the 1970s, there was one excellent top 40 FM radio station, and it was Y100.

We were the competition.

We were trying to beat Y-100.

So I, when Jerry Clifton brought us in there, he didn't have us come in to think they were nice guys.

He wanted us to beat them up.

If they did a promotion, we went to steal their listeners.

We did everything we could to invade the number one top 40 radio station in America.

So I hated those guys.

I wanted to beat those guys.

So when Jerry Clifton leaves, and then I start applying for jobs around the country, I get a phone call one night on my radio show at 96x, and it's this guy saying, Hey, Bill Tanner wants to talk to you.

Well, that's the guy who's running Y100.

And I'm like, I don't want to, I don't want to go to Y100.

I hate those guys.

And what would Jerry Clifton think?

I mean, here's this guy I've given my heart to.

He's turned me on to this great business, and I've, you know, my education level has jumped.

I've gotten better all the time.

And I'm like, I okay, I'll meet with him.

Well, I didn't even meet with him.

I would I met with the guy I was gonna replace.

That guy is the one who said, listen, man, I think you're the one who needs to replace me.

I'm leaving, and this is Y100, and I've heard everybody in the country, and I think you need to be my replacement.

So you need to talk to Bill Tanner.

And, you know, it's funny.

I got together with them and they paid me more money than I'd ever seen in my life.

And our first staff meeting was funny because I was Kid Curry, this cowboy from Colorado.

I come in with my come in with my cowboy boots on, and you know, these guys, these guys are all Miami dudes.

They've got their shorts on, their slaps, you know, they're sitting back, and I'm on the other side of the room all by myself.

It was hilarious.

But again, I'm again I walked into an education.

Now I'm getting my master's degree because now I'm learning from a guy who takes radio.

Jerry Clifton taught it from the street value, which was important.

I'm glad I learned that.

But then Bill Tanner taught it from the education value and how to do it and how to pick things apart and how to learn what the best songs to play are, how to put the right words on the radio in seven words or seven seconds.

You know, I learned so much.

And, you know, a year after that, I'm being nominated for a radio DJ of the year awards and things like that in Billboard magazine.

So it worked out really, really, really well.

SPEAKER_01: Wow, that's incredible.

All from all from you getting what you thought was a babysitting job.

Hey, I loved my voice on the radio.

That's just cool.

That's just incredible.

So now, about how old were you when all of that was was going down in Miami?

SPEAKER_00: Right around 22, 23, until about 26 years old.

And then, you know, now it was my turn.

Now I wanted to become, I had learned from Jerry Clifton, I'd learned from Bill Tanner, I was being nominated for DJ of the Year Awards.

I want to be the boss, I want to be the guy on the morning show.

So I got a job offer to go across the street from Y-100.

So here I've gone from 96X to Y-100.

And then there was a brand new station that came on called I-95.

And they thought, and the very genius is well, it's not really genius, it's pretty simple.

If you want, if you want to make noise on a radio station in the morning as a brand new radio station, you want to try to find a really good nighttime disc jockey.

And so it was their thought that if they can go across the street and find the guy at Y-100 to do the morning show over here, then that will give us a good stand, a good place to start in the competition to try to take over and beat Y-100, which they never really did.

But I did go across the street and I did do the morning show, and I learned what it was like to be on the radio in the morning.

About a year after I got there, I got a program director offer from KTSA in San Antonio, Texas.

So I took off to be a program director for the first time in San Antonio, Texas.

It's a legendary radio station.

And remember, I said that top 40 was on AM radio back in the day, and then it came on to FM.

Well, in Texas, it was it lagged.

AM was still playing top 40 radio, and KTSA was a big, big AM radio station in San Antonio with, you know, legendary, legendary people on it.

Ricky Ware, Bruce Hathaway, a guy by the name of Charlie Brown, and I got to go be on there for a while.

But as the progression of my radio career continued, um I didn't do very well for those guys.

And they got rid of me.

Uh, you know, it was funny because I had grown up in this thought process of being really innovative, breaking the rules on purpose.

Well, when I got to KTSA, I thought, well, I'm gonna break some rules here, but it was a legendary place, and they didn't want me to do anything, but keep it the way it was.

So I didn't do very well for those people.

And then Bill Tanner, yeah, well, I admit it, man.

I'm sorry.

You know, he just got this long haired guy with tight jeans on, and he got these cowboys, they're Levi's, and you know, cowboy hats going.

Well, who is this guy?

But you know, but I well again, I learned from legends.

Bruce Hathaway.

If anybody's hearing this in Texas, you know who I'm talking about.

If I say Ricky Ware, you know who I'm talking about.

These were incredibly talented, legendary broadcasters who taught me a lot.

But about a year after I had I got there, Bill Tanner had gone from Y-100 up to Washington, D.C.

to work at Wash FM in Washington, D.C., another legendary property.

And uh he brought the Y100 style of radio into Washington, D.C.

and thought, well, we need to get the band back together, so let's get Kid Curry up here.

And so I went back up to my uh to Washington, D.C.

and worked for Tanner up there.

And we had a great radio station.

It was smoking.

We were first station ever to give away a million dollars in Washington, D.C.

But again, it was those long-haired, freaky people with the tight jeans in Washington, D.C.

They didn't like us.

Yeah.

Oh my gosh.

The ratings were terrible.

But you know, something happened on that radio station that again, it's really where I first had my first multiple sclerosis exacerbation.

Kevin, again, you can interrupt me whenever you're ready, sir.

SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, you're fine.

Keep going.

SPEAKER_00: Okay.

So I used to do a feature at night on the radio.

I called it bed check.

And it was always, it always happened during the last five or 10 minutes of my radio show.

And what I would do is I would just open the phones.

I'd let kids call in and make jokes about their schoolmates or make a joke about a teacher or rip on their brother or do whatever they wanted to do.

And it was really, it became pretty funny.

It was really good.

But in Washington, D.C., it took a whole different turn because I'm there with politicians.

And so the little kids would be on there, but every now and then I'd get somebody promoting like, Ronald Reagan.

So I I picked up the phone one night, and there was this guy who got on there and he said, Hey, my name is Frank Deframer, and I'm over here at the White House.

And President Reagan was just in my office listening to the bed check.

And I was like, ha ha ha ha ha.

And I hung up and I went on because I just thought it was some guy making that up.

Then he continued to call back and he kept saying, Hey, it's me, Frank DeFramer, over here at the White House.

And here's what happened at the White House today.

And like, so but it was funny, but I thought it was a bit.

And then after about the third, fourth time, I stopped and I picked up the phone.

I said, Okay, man, who are you?

What are you talking about?

He says, Well, my name is Frank the Framer.

I work at the White House.

Surprisingly enough, someone needs to do upkeep and put frames on all the portraits in this building, and it's me.

Oh my goodness.

Hey, Frank the Framer.

Oh my God.

And Frank said the president would come in and listen to bedcheck almost every night.

I was like, Frank, are you kidding?

He's no, no, he loves it.

He thinks that's funny because Reagan's an old radio guy, man.

So he was just getting off on listening to it.

Well, and and believe me, it was a unique radio station for Washington, D.C.

We were progressive.

I was I was not normal, but they they all had big, big, deep voiced DJs.

And there was this little kid on there.

Hey! So okay, so then time goes on.

Okay.

My girlfriend, I move up to Baltimore to go work.

Uh Tanner goes back to Miami.

I don't want to follow Tanner back to Miami, so I go to work in Baltimore at a station called B-104, run by Steve Kingston, who ends up being the program director of Z100 New York, the biggest top 40 station in America.

And I learned a lot from Steve Kingston.

So I'm working in Baltimore, and my girlfriend's grandmother comes to visit from Texas.

And she says, and so we're talking at dinner, and oh yeah, I've got this friend, Frank DeFramer.

It's so funny.

He does this.

And she says, well, then I want to go to the White House.

If you've got a friend, let's go.

Oh no.

SPEAKER_01: Oh no.

I didn't mean that kind of friend.

SPEAKER_00: Oh, really?

Okay.

So hi.

Um, yeah.

Uh I'm looking for a guy by the name of Frank DeFramer.

I'm thinking, click, but I get a okay, hang on.

I'm like, whoa, he's real.

And he picks the phone up.

He says, there's Frank DeFramer.

I said, Frank is Kid Curry.

Kid, how you doing?

It was like, whoa, whoa.

So then I tell him, you know, my girl wants to come over, wants to bring grandma over.

And now this is just after the Reagan assassination attempt.

There is there are no new guidelines about how to approach the White House yet.

They hadn't changed anything.

So he says, just come on over, tell the guys at the gate you're here, you want to see me, I'll tell them to expect you.

So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna drive up to the White House.

So I get in the car and I've got the grandma on the back and the girl on the right, and I'm driving in and I and I don't really know where to go.

I'll go around the block twice, but I see this one road, and it looks like it goes right up next to the side.

And I'm thinking, well, that's the way.

Here I go.

And so I start going down that road.

And needless to say, the Secret Service was not thrilled.

Uh suddenly they come out.

I'm driving closer and closer, and I'm seeing more and more guys come at me with guns drawn.

Oh no.

This wasn't funny.

This was well, it but okay.

So so I get there, and now needless to say, my adrenaline is running like crazy.

And I stop the car.

And as I stop the car, the right side of my face goes numb and my I lose vision in my right eye, and then my shoulder starts to droop.

And so when I open up the door, I get out of the car and I fall to the ground.

And these guys are like, oh, Freeze, Freeze.

I'm like, no, Frank the Framer of Kid Curry, Frank DeFrame.

Hey, oh, kid, kid, are you okay?

So I was like, wow, it was a quick turn.

But these guys uh set me up.

Frank set me up, and I got to go into the White House and take grandma in there.

We got to go to the backstage areas where no one gets to go.

And but it was my first MS exacerbation because any doctor will tell you that stress is involved with multiple sclerosis.

So as I'm driving up and my stress level is peaking, all these things, see, I have lesions in my brain that I don't even know I've got at this point.

So all the adrenaline, it flashes these things in my brain, and I lose my vision, everything falls apart.

And it took probably 20 minutes, 25 minutes for me to be able to even sit up.

But you know, they got me in for the tour and it was all good.

But uh that was my first uh MS exacerbation.

I didn't know I and it didn't it didn't cause me to go to the doctor.

I just thought, whoa, that was weird.

SPEAKER_01: So that was like the most incredible story.

I mean, most of the time, I mean, never was I thinking that that's how we were gonna get the first symptom.

Like that you were that you were you know figuring out that you you know would lead to a diagnosis of having MS is is being having guns drawn on you at the at the White House.

I mean, that's just that is so intense.

And and based on just the little bit that I know about you from the few minutes we've been talking, I honestly would not have expected anything less of the first experience.

SPEAKER_00: Well, it was exciting, needless to say, and it knocked me back.

And but you know, it went away.

And you know, but but it when I finally got diagnosed, you know, and then I want to go ahead and tell you about another exacerbation just after my just after my daughter was born.

SPEAKER_01: Well, hold on.

Wait, real real quick, before we go there, because I can tell it's kind of leading in.

So that girlfriend who you took to the White House, was she the same girlfriend who then became your wife?

Goodbye.

SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, man, you know, I've got a I've I've I'm an old radio DJ, and unfortunately, I got people that are still my friend.

They don't hate me.

I've been married this time for over 20 years.

So it's like I was a young guy and I made some big mistakes.

But so no, she's she disappears.

And, you know, so I go on back down to Miami.

I get married again uh to actually no, I got married to again in Baltimore to a girl in Baltimore and then went back down to Miami.

Uh we had my first my first daughter, my first child, and you know, I woke up the morning afterwards and I couldn't feel the outside of my feet.

And and I was like, what is that?

I couldn't even stand up straight.

It was funny, it's just weird again.

But that one caused me to go in and and and to at least ask a doctor what could be going on, and which caused me to have a uh MRI.

And uh the doctor said at the time that it looks like you've got some some lesions, but I didn't even know what it meant.

I really, you know, I'm sorry, I was a young radio guy, and I know this sounds crazy, Kevin, but this radio thing when radio was real, it's there's been a corporate takeover since the 1996 plus era.

Uh, but before that, radio was real.

Guys who got into it really got into it to create innovative, fun, exciting radio that served the public interest.

It changed after 1996.

So I got into it as a guy who's, and my dad got me into it.

So I've this has been bleeding through me for years.

It's in my blood.

And strangely enough, when I finally got diagnosed, the doctor said the reason that you've probably had this is because you have stressed yourself into this.

Because I work constantly.

I would work from you know, six in the morning till 10 o'clock at night.

And sometimes I'd I'd go in at six, and at 10 o'clock, I'd go into a club until two or three in the morning.

We're talking Miami radio.

So it was real high energy, and and all this stress eventually caught up with me.

And uh now I've I've spent some time out doing some things around America.

Go I go back down to Miami.

And then I get my father has both legs amputated around 1992.

And I thought, well, I'm just gonna go home and take care of my dad for a while.

I took a sabbatical from my office in Miami, went out to Colorado.

The guy who was my college radio professor gave me a job as program director of the local station that he was running at the time, was an oldie station, KDZAFM.

So for the year that I was home taking care of my dad, you know, I was putting in ramps, widening doors and things like that because those things needed to happen.

I really didn't have to do too much work because my father's friends all came gather, gathering and rallied around him.

But it was a pretty much shock for my dad to have this happen to him.

So after about a year of being home, my dad said, What are you doing here?

You know, my dad was a radio guy and his son had gone on to some pretty big radio things.

And the last thing he wanted me to do was come home.

You know, at the highlight of my career.

So my dad said, get back to Miami.

And uh fortunately things worked out again.

I went back down to Miami and they hired me right back again at 96 uh I'm sorry, Power 96 radio at the time.

And um about a year after that, they got rid of the program director because the ratings were failing.

They weren't going very well.

Now you can imagine, after all these years of me doing all this programming around all these geniuses, I thought it was my turn.

And I thought I'd been looked over a few times.

So this time, when they fired the program director of Power 96 and made me the interim program director, they brought in program directors from around the country, all the geniuses from New York, Washington, D.C., LA.

They brought them all in to interview while I'm sitting at the programmer's desk running the radio station.

And while no one was paying attention, the ratings started going up because I changed some things.

I thought there's got to be an attitude change here.

I didn't want to change the people.

I was handed, you know, by the time I was handed the staff, these guys had already gone through the Bill Tanner and Jerry Clifton class.

They'd already worked for these guys.

It just so happened by the time I became program director, we had convened a whole group of those kind of people.

And the guy who was the program director before me didn't really grasp what that meant.

Well, I had been in those systems before.

I knew what that meant, and I knew what these guys needed for inspiration.

And so I started changing things at the station.

Six months later, they couldn't find the real program director, and I'm waving, it's gotta be me, it's gotta be me.

And they finally made me program director.

And then Power 96 went on to have the best ratings in the history of the radio station.

And it was a long history because the station I'm talking about now, Power 96, when you go all the way back to my career in the beginning, it was 96X.

It was the first station I worked at.

So eventually I got to become the boss, and I gave it higher ratings than it had ever had.

So these guys that I had learned from had taught the right guy, and at the right time in my life, and at the right time in this radio station's history, I became the program director, and we really killed it for nine strong, hard years.

Now we're talking around, oh, I don't know, 2004.

You're talking right around the time of the tsunami.

If you remember around 2004, we had that big tsunami in Singapore, or I I don't, where am I thinking?

I forgot the location.

But there was that huge tsunami that we all saw on TV for the first time in 2004.

I came home to visit my mother that weekend, and my mother didn't even know what the word tsunami was.

And remember, we'd never even seen a tsunami.

That was, they had TV cameras.

We watched people and animals and streets and houses get drawn out to see.

So it was very, it was very intense.

And my mother, I was at my mother's house every day.

We were watching all this video, and my mother kept saying, You don't look right.

Something's wrong with you.

You don't look right.

And by the time we left on that vacation, she said, You need to go see a doctor.

Something's wrong, your face is drooping, you, you don't look right.

Something is wrong.

And uh she was right.

I I knew that something had been going on.

My leg had, my right leg had been dragging behind me, my right eye had been, I've been having these black things, these floating things go on.

So at that point, the beginning of 2005, I finally went in for a real examination by a multiple sclerosis doctor, a neurologist, and uh through a series of three or four months of tests.

Is the finding MS is not easy.

Uh it's tough to find it.

And then around March of 2005, I get diagnosed.

A week after that, my wife and I decided that we had to stop doing what I was doing because the doctor had said that there was a good chance I'd stress myself into this.

So at that point, my wife and I decided to cash in and come home.

The only thing I could think to do was come home to Colorado, Little Canyon City, because I, you know, my finances were big in Little Canyon City, and we wanted to at least try to find a way to continue having income.

So we did some flipping and and uh fixing and flipping that that kind of thing for a while.

And while that went on for a couple of years, my condition went from walking with a cane to going with crutches and then ending up in a wheelchair.

It took about two years.

SPEAKER_01: How old were you at that point?

SPEAKER_00: Well, 950.

I was 50 years old.

That was 2005.

So at the age of 50, after running really hard for 50 years, 33 years in the broadcasting business at that point, I got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

And I'm telling you, it was scary because first of all, I didn't even know what it meant.

I mean, I'm I'm driving across Alligator Alley.

I was at my, okay, now at the time I was at Power 96 in Miami, but our corporate office was in Naples.

And I was at a corporate meeting with the corporate geniuses on a Friday afternoon when my doctor called me on the phone and gave me the diagnosis.

So I came back into a meeting and just backed up my stuff and said, See you boys.

I got to go think about something.

There's something going on with me.

So as I'm driving back across Alligator Alley to go see my wife, we're on the phone the whole time.

It was in the very beginning of cell phones.

And uh I had a flip phone and and uh we're talking about what's going on, and she's looking up, doing whatever the 2005 version of Google is.

And uh I did not know as I'm driving home that you could die from multiple sclerosis.

It really hit me hard for probably pretty close to six to eight years.

But now, during the time when I'm having these problems and I'm focusing strictly on my physical ability, trying to not act like I've got MS.

I mean, my wife let me buy a tractor.

We had a pro we had an acre of property.

My wife let me buy a tractor.

So I can't walk, my legs don't work, but I can certainly pull myself up on this tractor leg at a time and sit in the seat.

And then I can put one foot on the pedal and push it down to make the tractor go forward and then do that to make it stop.

So I did everything I could.

I worked hard on my property.

I crawled on rocks in my mind, thinking I wasn't, I'm not gonna let this thing beat me.

I'm not gonna go down like this.

While I'm doing that, my wife has gone from fixing and flipping houses.

She didn't like the real estate people that she was dealing with when we were buying these homes.

So she thought, I'm gonna go become a real estate agent because I can outdo these guys.

And so she went out and got a real estate license.

And then she starts breaking records in the state of Colorado in real estate and sales and things.

And so she begins to master real estate while my condition is varying, not doing well, going down fairly dramatically.

Now, when I got first got diagnosed, there were only about five medicines for multiple sclerosis.

By this time, there's eight, and there's one that I'm on called Rebith.

And my doctor said, we've been trying this, it's not changing anything.

We've got to get off of this.

We were about six to eight years on it.

We tried a new medicine called Copaxone, and it was good because I went from a shot every day for six years to a shot three times a week, which was really good for me.

You know, that's never fun getting shots.

So, geez, I just my part of my MS is I lose my train of thought, Kevin.

SPEAKER_01: Well, no, that's that's okay because you are just totally blowing my mind with with your story, because you don't, I mean, because you are you are so true to who you are as this radio disc jockey, this amazing guy, because I'm sitting here thinking to myself, wow, normally I do these episodes and like I have to have like a full-on conversation.

But I'm like, this is like me.

I'm just sitting back listening to you, and I'm just like in awe at the way, the way in which you can describe this.

But at the same point, I'm sitting here thinking, and you were just telling about how you're getting used to life, you're you're trying to, you know, you're using this tractor at the same time that your your wife has gotten into real estate and that's exploding for her.

And and I and I can't help but wonder, because me with my own life's you know, challenges that I've been through, I've realized the importance that family plays.

And and I can't help but want to ask you how much did your family, particularly thinking your wife, play in this journey for you?

SPEAKER_00: Well, Kevin understand that, you know, I'd been married a couple of times and I wasn't very good at it.

And it even crossed my mind when I was diagnosed that this lady's not gonna stay around for this.

But I had found the right woman.

She and I got along the first time we met, and I was in love, and she was in love, and she wasn't gonna let anything happen to me.

She was gonna fight this battle with me.

And my wife is the one who got the best crutches for me, got the best wheelchair for me, is the one who found hand controls for the car so I can drive.

My wife is the one who found the number one multiple sclerosis doctor in the state of Colorado.

My wife is the one who found all the best therapists to get to.

So I depend on her a lot.

She is my full-time caregiver.

I don't ever give her enough credit.

And sometimes I can be a real butthead, but uh, but uh, you know, I'm I what can you do?

You know, you the person that is next to me has really helped me get through my life at a very critical moment when it was going down pretty badly.

It could have gotten a lot worse for me.

And then, you know, there came that point when I said I had a med that the medicine was changing and I started on this Copaxone.

At the same time, the doctor encouraged me to begin taking vitamin D because he has a belief.

He's got a book out called Optimal Health with Multiple Sclerosis.

He's got the belief that that humans need more vitamin D, and specifically, MS patients have deficiency in vitamin D and they need to take a lot of it.

So I was taking five, six thousand uh IUs a day.

Uh, six months after the medicine change and me taking all this vitamin D, the level of my of the progression of my condition leveled off.

I stopped getting worse.

I started feeling better.

My mind started turning on.

And uh after eight years of being afraid I was gonna die, suddenly I'm like, wait a minute, it's not getting worse.

It's it's bad, it's still bad, but it's not getting worse.

And so that really kind of turned me on to a brand new life.

And um, I've been progressing ever since then, uh trying to no longer be the DJ, but now become a writer.

I've written my memoir, Come Get Me Mother, I'm through.

It's the story of my radio career and my MS diagnosis.

And I've also written another book called The Death of Fairness.

This is a tale of buttons and what happened to a small American town and its only radio station after President Reagan rescinded the Fairness Doctrine.

But I don't now I'm a writer.

Now I'm I try to do what I can to be positive to people.

I I do uh podcasts on multiple sclerosis.

I'm, you know, a member of all these MS groups on Facebook.

Try to communicate as much as I can with people about my condition and and try to keep them positive and let them know that, you know, there could come a time if you're, you know, I didn't, I'd never, I'd never, you know, when you go to the waiting room at the doctor's office, you don't really talk to anybody.

My doctor insisted after a while that I go to these men over 50 with MS meetings.

I'd never been with anybody and never heard anybody who talked about MS like we all talk about it.

And it was really encouraging for me.

So I try to encourage men to keep trying.

It's tough when some of these men think that they've tried drugs all the last 15 years and nothing's helped, and they want to stop taking drugs, and there's only one thing that's going to happen after that.

So it's it's it's I try to be as positive as I can for these people and try to reach out and do what I can as much as I can.

I do the MS walk-a-thons or in my case, wheelchair-a-thons.

SPEAKER_01: No, but that's just that's all so amazing.

And and when you talk about these, you know, different support groups and stuff, and I can tell you from my own experience, you know, becoming blind is all the the the quote unquote professionals, the the the different, you know, guidance counselors who are at these different centers that help people with who are blind and and stuff, they all talk to me about, you know, oh, I you know, that I need to get you know involved with other people who are blind.

And and and for a long time, I didn't want anything to do with that.

Because for myself, it was like, I I'm just I listen, I'm not, I'm not them.

I'm not, that's not me.

But I can tell you that as time has gone on, finally I got to this point.

And thanks to to Facebook, is I've now become part of multiple support groups through Facebook that are nothing but people all over the world who are blind or visually impaired, who are just like me going through the same thing that I am, that I have been.

And it's so amazing when you can come to that point where you want the support from others.

And it's just so enlightening to know that you're not the only one going through it.

SPEAKER_00: It was strange to have the first time when the guy said, uh, he says, uh, gee, uh, I got up this morning and uh everything was fine.

I started to walk out the front door and I peed.

I'm like, oh, that happens to me.

That happens to me.

It's not just me.

It was like, yes, you know, and and so yeah, you learn a lot from people who've been here.

And um, you really begin to open up your mind and open up your eyes to others because you know, we all we all have it bad to a certain degree, but we can all certainly do things like Muhammad Ali says, our, you know, our mission in his life is to do good.

It's our pay for being on the planet.

So um, you know, it's it's it's a good thing to get involved.

And that's what I try to do now.

That's my thing.

That's what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_01: That's right.

That's right.

Well, well, my goodness.

I mean, I certainly can sit here and say that you are a gift.

You are a gift to me talking to you.

And I feel you're a gift to anybody who hears your story.

You are so positive, you're so uplifting.

And I just I I can't thank you enough for coming on my podcast.

SPEAKER_00: Well, Kevin, you know, I I believe uh in this friendship.

So you have a new friend, you keep me in your quote unquote Rolodex.

unknown: That's right.

SPEAKER_01: We we we you you just really dated yourself on that term.

Yep.

SPEAKER_00: But we we will continue this conversation whenever you need to, man.

We'll we'll talk again if you need to.

But I've had a great time.

And now I want to learn about you.

So I'm gonna go look at all your other podcasts and learn more about you.

SPEAKER_01: Well, awesome.

Well, I appreciate that so much.

And now tell me real quick, where can people find your book or your books?

Excuse me.

SPEAKER_00: My website is krcurry.com.

You see everything you need to know on there.

In fact, probably too much.

I'm gonna be designing a new website soon.

You know, this my book about the death of fairness, uh, about Ronald Reagan rescinded the fairness doctrine.

Remember, there was a time when it was required equal time for contrasting points of view.

If someone lied, you, me, we had the right to go to that TV radio station and demand equal time to dispel that lie.

In 1987, that stopped.

And then you had Rush Limba and the rise of all these very aggressive right-wing talk show hosts who spew things without any without any any combat, without anybody trying to correct the lie.

And so I'm very passionate about it.

And so I'm writing another book about this particular subject because I think that some little girl someday will read this book and say, you know, we can go back to those days.

And uh, so that that's what my website has on there, probably a little bit too much.

I'm pretty politically uh active about trying to change things back to the day when when you had equal time for contrasting points of view.

You did not have the division in America that you have today until 1987.

SPEAKER_01: That's enough.

I'll stop.

No, that's perfect.

Well, that that definitely leaves people intrigued to learn more or thinking, yeah, oh Kim Curry, isn't it?

I don't know.

And you know, I'm just sitting here and I have to say before we end this that I just feel like the only person I could relate you to is like, I feel as though I've just had an entire podcast with like Casey Caseum.

SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm honored.

And you know, there's there's all sorts of real funny Casey Caseon type stories in my book, Come Get Me Mother, I'm Through.

I have stories in there about Casey and the Sunshine Band, Snoop Dogg, I had a boy band at one time.

So there's all sorts of fun stories about that kind of thing in the book, Come Get Me Mother, I'm Through.

SPEAKER_01: Well, well, listen here.

So, Kid Curry, you're gonna be back again.

I can tell you that.

And um, so to everyone listening, I just want you to know, just stay tuned because we will be doing more podcasts with this amazing guy.

SPEAKER_00: Kevin, thank you very much for your time, my friend.

I really enjoyed it, all right?

SPEAKER_01: You are certainly welcome.

And that's the lowdown with Kevin Lowe.

I hope today's episode inspired you, motivated you, and excited you to get out and enjoy life, no matter what obstacles may be standing in the way.