He says he was a quiet, weird little kid, but when given an opportunity to perform, he’d do Richard Nixon impressions at the family barbecue. Dave Glover, host of The Dave Glover Show on KMOX-AM in St. Louis is celebrating 25 years in radio this year — a career he says he never even considered. But, then again, he has a way of falling into success.
The lawyer, who might have been a carpenter, singer, doctor or even a minister fell into radio under the oddest of circumstances.
“I was the only person who ever got into radio the way I did,” Dave says. He states he had racked up a $10,000 advertising bill for his law practice with Emmis Communications, which, at the time, wanted to start 97.1 FM TALK. He says he went to the station’s office to take his future wife, who was a sales rep at the station, to lunch.
“Steve and D.C., and the staff, were in the conference room talking about who they were going to put on the air. They had no money, no budget,” he says, adding that he had established a relationship with the two St. Louis radio personalities of 106.5 FM, as they did live endorsements for his firm, Common Ground Mediation.
“I was just trying to be funny, so I walked by and flipped them off,” Dave says. Somehow that got their attention and had them considering to hire Dave to host a show on 97.1. The plan was that he could wipe out his bill if he would go on air for $100 a day.
“Two years later, we went to number one in St. Louis. So, with my first radio job, I cracked the market of PM drive time in the top 20 market with 97.1. I went from being an indentured servant to being on top to making more than the station manager,” he recalls.
Today, KMOX spans 27 states and has 140 Cardinals affiliates. The station went to FM in March for the first time with 104.1 FM. KMOX will celebrate its 100th anniversary on Christmas Eve this year.
Dave says he never thought he would end up on radio, though his show, airing live on KMOX 104.1 FM from 1 to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, is a huge hit. He says the show is sort of a “Seinfeld of radio about everything and nothing.”
Dave has had a lifetime of successes in everything he’s tried, though he says all he ever really wanted to do was make people laugh, like Bob Newhart and Carol Burnett.
Born the last of three children to Jack, a union carpenter, and Frances, a homemaker, Dave hails from South Roxana, Illinois. Dave says everything he has done “is what made my parents want to send me to a home. I was so weird.”
He says he went to law school on a “drunken bar bet.” He was hanging out with the members of his band at the time, when one of them dared the “little genius" to take the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT). “I took it and forgot about it,” he adds.
But he later decided to give lawyering a shot, as he didn’t know what else he wanted to do at the time. “I was good at it, because I’m a performer. A lot of law school is performing. But actually, being a lawyer is like doing homework every day. I don’t like things that aren’t fun.”
He lived in Alaska for a short time doing legal work on the Exxon Valdez oil spill during 1989. He also filled in numerous times for conservative political commentator and radio host of TheBlaze, Glenn Beck. It's assumed he has an uncommonly high IQ, though he won’t reveal the number. And, he says, he’s actually seen Big Foot.
Dave also says he considered becoming a minister and even a doctor. “I was always fascinated by doctors, but I have no discipline. I would have been everyone’s favorite doctor whose dad died in my care,” he quips.
Dave’s mother died on hospice last year. A group of volunteers with No One Dies Alone (NODA) so affected him by spending time with his mother, that he now volunteers with them, sitting with people and holding their hands as they die. “I was so moved by that, I became one of them,” he says. “It has been incredibly impactful.”
He shares that he asked his then 4-year-old daughter Phoebe, now 20, what she thought made a good life. “She said, ‘It’s having crazy stories, like you do,’” Dave says. “She said with my band and radio show, ‘You make people laugh and you make people sing.’”