Radio soul Indulging his lifelong love for the airwaves into his 70s, CJOB host Tom Milroy has no plan to drop the mic just yet By: David Sanderson Posted: 2:00 AM CDT Saturday, Sep. 21, 2024

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This article was published 21/09/2024 (714 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Tom Milroy, the amiable host of Saturday Morning with Tom Milroy on 680 CJOB, was vacationing in Palm Springs, Calif., in 2014 when he received a call from work.

Milroy, who had caught on at the AM juggernaut a year earlier, 11 months after being let go from 99.9 BOB-FM, stared down at his phone. “Ooh, this can’t be good,” he murmured to his wife, Maureen.

The veteran radio personality became even more confused when he picked up, only to discover their son Kyle, a technical producer at ’OB, was on the line, along with his then-boss Scott Pettigrew.

“All I could think of was that I was being canned again, and that they wanted Kyle to be a witness,” Milroy says, seated in San Vito Coffee House on Portage Avenue, one of the favourite haunts of father of two and grandfather of two.

He needn’t have fretted. His position was still safe, Pettigrew informed him. Not only that, he was the newest member of the Manitoba Broadcasters Hall of Fame, a virtual sanctum that theretofore had honoured industry legends such as Cliff Gardner, Sylvia Kuzyk and “the Master of the Morning” himself, Don Percy.

Milroy was familiar with the hall, as his good pal Howard Mandshein had been inducted the year before. The news bowled him over, nonetheless.

“I was very proud, but also very surprised,” says Milroy, whose weekly program touches on a bit of everything, including politics, entertainment, the local concert calendar and sports. “Mind you, I’m surprised every time somebody tells me they listen to my show. It definitely keeps you humble when a person stops to ask, ‘Are you still in radio?’”

Milroy, 72, the younger of two brothers, grew up on Stalker Bay in North Kildonan. He was definitely that kid with a transistor radio perpetually glued to his ear, only he wasn’t so much interested in the latest hits by the Rolling Stones or Beach Boys as he was the disc jockeys’ between-song banter.

“Doc Steen, Bob Washington, Boyd Kozak… I was a fan of all those guys, big time,” he says, dressed in shorts, sandals and a T-shirt bearing an image of DC Comics superhero Black Adam. (He jokes, commenting he doesn’t own any proper clothes, as every day in his line of work is Casual Friday.)

By his own admission, Milroy “pissed around” for four years after graduating from River East Collegiate. In 1974 he decided it was high time to buckle down. At age 22 he enrolled in the two-year Creative Communications program at what was then called Red River Community College. The Notre Dame Avenue campus boasted a closed-circuit radio station where Milroy began volunteering his services as an on-air voice.

He was managing the station by his second year of studies, a paying gig that saw him dealing with record-label managers out to promote new releases, as well as touring musicians hoping to plug an upcoming concert.

“It was good practice, absolutely, and although my courses also included television and journalism, I’d kinda made up my mind that radio was where it was at, for me,” he states.

Soon after leaving Red River, he landed an announcer job at 730 CKDM, an AM station in Dauphin where he earned the princely sum of $500 a month. His shifts were all over the map, some days noon to 6 p.m., other times 6 p.m. to midnight, but the experience he gained was invaluable, he says.

A disagreement with a superior — for the life of him, he can’t remember what it was about — ultimately led to his dismissal. He returned to Winnipeg, where, thanks to a college acquaintance, he was hired by CKY 580 AM as a reporter. That was back when radio stations could afford a full-time newshound, he adds with a wink.

KY’s sister station 92 CITI-FM received its broadcasting licence in April 1978. In a matter of months, Milroy was tapped to partner with “Brother” Jake Edwards, the station’s popular morning personality. Around Edwards’ various shticks — fictional character the Champ comes to mind — Milroy ran through the day’s headlines at the top of the hour, before wittily bantering back and forth with Edwards.

It was during their four-year run together when he conducted one of his most memorable interviews, with former Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth, ahead of the American group’s 1980 appearance at the Winnipeg Arena in support of its World Invasion Tour.

“There was a CITI-FM get-together at the Holiday Inn and Roth and (Eddie) Van Halen were both there,” Milroy recollects. “I had my tape recorder with me — a big clunky thing — and I asked David, who was dressed in this white jumpsuit open down to there, if he had a few minutes to chat.

“‘Sure,’ he said, then he started ranting and raving how they were going to rock Winnipeg and blah, blah, blah, before completely changing his tone of voice and whispering ‘Do you have enough?’ He knew the game, that was for sure.”

“I’m surprised every time somebody tells me they listen to my show.”–Tom Milroy

Milroy was married with a two-year-old when he found himself on the unemployment line in 1985. He spent a year as “Mr. Mom,” while his wife helped to make ends meet. He was “this close” to starting anew, career-wise, when in 1986 he was brought on as a newscaster at Q94-FM.

In 1989, Q-94 introduced Wolfgang Fritzsche, a former CKRC jock known to listeners as Beau, as its new morning host. The program director guessed Fritzsche and Milroy would be a good match, and paired them up in April of that year. Fritzsche, currently heard on Winnipeg’s Bounce 99.9, says he never anticipated his professional relationship with Milroy would span — “seriously, can you believe it?” — the next 23 years.

“We had similar backgrounds. We both grew up in the city and both had two sons around the same age, which is probably why we clicked so well,” Fritzsche says, when reached at work.

Fritzsche, who followed his chum into the Manitoba Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2017, says he and Milroy had such a blast working together that it’s difficult to pinpoint one or two instances from their tenures at Q-94 (later FAB 94.3) and BOB-FM that stand out above all others.

Maybe it was the occasion they were flown to Nashville for a week, to be photographed as close to in the nude as possible, for a cheeky ad campaign that ran under the banner “Q-94 FM is all you need to put on.” Or perhaps it was the evening they donned wigs and ran up on stage to impersonate the Spice Girls for a fundraising event at the former Wise Guys night club.

“Then there was the Halloween night we spent at the old Mother Tucker’s restaurant downtown, in the Masonic Temple building that’s supposedly haunted,” Fritzsche continues. “We brought six winners with us for a nice dinner, then stayed up all night hoping to run into some ghosts. Nobody got any sleep, whatsoever, and the next morning’s broadcast was a bit of a s—t show, but Tommy, ever the professional, kept it together for the both of us.”

Dez Daniels, the host of CTV food series Great Tastes of Manitoba, shared a studio with “Beau and Tom,” as they were widely known, for seven years, beginning in 2000. She and Milroy still see each other regularly and if there’s one trait she continues to enjoy most about her chum, it’s his wry sense of humour.

“There was something about him that allowed me to relax on and off the air.”–Dez Daniels

“Tom never, ever failed to make me laugh. The boys and I went for dinner only a couple of months ago and it’s just a thing how Tommy can deliver a line with absolute precision,” Daniels says.

Daniels, more than 20 years Milroy’s junior, goes on, noting that almost from the get-go, their professional partnership was akin to a big brother looking out for his little sister.

“There was something about him that allowed me to relax on and off the air, (plus) he got away with teasing me with things no other person up until that point could,” she states. “That dynamic definitely made for a more comfortable work environment, and I think maybe filtered down to what people heard on the air.”

In addition to his quick wit, another of his attributes is a tender heart, Daniels points out. In fact, one of her most cherished remembrances in regard to Milroy has zilch to do with a microphone.

“When my former father-in-law passed away years ago, Tom saw me across the room after the service. Threading his way through a crowd, he walked up to me with his arms open wide and his face filled with emotion, and gave me the kind of hug only a loving friend can. At the end of the day, he’s just a good, good man.”

A few months after Milroy lost his job at BOB-FM in 2012, he suffered a serious heart attack, which he sheepishly attributes to a decades-old smoking habit he has since kicked. He recovered in time for his 60th birthday, and announced to anyone who would listen that he was still raring to go.

In January 2013 he met one of CJOB’s higher-ups for coffee. He again mentioned how he’d be interested in any opening, whatsoever. Two weeks later he was offered a weekend-morning slot.

“There were definitely some nerves involved, as it was the first time since those early days in Dauphin where I’d be pretty much on my own,” he says. “Plus I had to learn how to operate the board — Beau always enjoyed doing that when we were together — and I’m sure the 20-year-olds training me were going ‘stupid old man,’ as I was endlessly putting down strips of masking tape marked ‘Hit this button, not that button.’”

And sure, Milroy’s current show may be a mere two hours in length, but he spends a good chunk of the week coming up with segment ideas — he’s a huge movie buff and loves throwing together best-of lists — and contacting potential subjects for live interviews. (Last Saturday, he chatted with actor and comedian Heather Winterden. The week before he quizzed organizer Gloria D’Ignazio about an upcoming screening of 1974’s Phantom of the Paradise at the Burton Cummings Theatre.)

“It’s not a controversial show in any way, shape or form, but I do try to remain current,” he explains. “And being a news guy, I’m naturally curious, so it allows me to continue to explore what’s going on around us, while still making time for fluffier stuff, if you want to call it that.”

As for future plans, he’ll put it on record that the R-word remains absent from his vocabulary.

“The year 2026 would be 50 years in the business, which would be a nice round number to hit, and since I’m still relatively healthy (here he leans over to knock his knuckles on a wooden table), I figure why not keep going? At least until I forget where it is I’m going, I suppose.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca