Gary Stevens, last surviving WMCA 'Good Guy,' prominent radio exec, dies at 84

Gary Stevens, the last surviving member of the famed WMCA radio "Good Guys" — later in his career one of the radio industry's most influential brokers — died Monday in Delray Beach, Florida. His family, who announced his death in the radio trade publications, said he was 84.

A Buffalo native, Stevens joined WMCA in April 1965, as one of the "Good Guys," a promotional handle that the rest of the on-air crew adopted to distinguish themselves from the more prominent "All-Americans" at WABC. Along with Stevens — just 24 when he started — the other "Good Guys" included major New York radio figures such as Harry Harrison (who died in 2020) and Jack Spector (who died in 1994, when he was on the air at WHLI in Hempstead). Together they formed a mighty front at a tiny radio station — just 5,000 watts compared to WABC's 50,000 watts. (The other "Good Guys" during WMCA's glory days were Joe O'Brien, "Dandy Dan" Daniel, Dean Anthony and Ed Baer.) 

But it was Stevens whose voice was loudest. (Listen to one of his 1967 shows here.)

"He was the 'nighttime screamer,' " said Talkers Magazine publisher and veteran radio host Michael Harrison. "Back in those days, the morning man was the friendly guy, like [WABC's] Herb Oscar Anderson, and midday was the guy who spoke to housewives, while the afternoon host was funny with edge, like Dan Ingram. And then you had the nighttime guy who talked to the teenagers — that was the 'screamer,' the one with the voice, like Cousin Brucie, Murray the K or Gary."

Weeknights from 7 to 11, Stevens' voice was like a shot out of a cannon — big and boisterous — that helped launch songs and careers over a formative period in rock and roll history of the late '60s. He also had a fictional on-air "mascot," whom he called the Wooleyburger, who growled and grunted over the air — those growls and grunts actually came from Stevens, who would then interpret what the Wooleyburger had just said for his audience.

WABC's "Cousin" Bruce Morrow — already a New York radio legend by then who had helped launched the Beatles in the United States and who still has a Saturday night show at the station — said in an interview Wednesday that Stevens had "a very big voice [and] he was very up to date and aware of what was happening [in the industry]. I'd listen to him and him to me. We were opposite each other on the air, but we all did very well. He was a big personality and absolutely an innovator — and an innovator who had characters on the air. He was very much of the '60s, a real '60s jock. They used to call us 'boss jocks,' and he was one of them."

Morrow added that there was "this tremendous competitive spirit between us and what we called those 'damned' Good Guys at WMCA and we really made listeners think we were really angry at each other. But [off-air] we'd get together and it was like a fraternity, a radio club."

Of Stevens, he said, "there were two sides — the professional and the personal, and I liked his personal side very much. He was a warm person and had a great spirit."

After Stevens left WMCA in 1968, he moved to Europe then returned to the United States in 1971 when he was recruited by Nelson Doubleday Jr. to run his radio station in Phoenix. After running other Doubleday stations, Stevens was named president of Doubleday Broadcasting in 1977. After leaving in 1985, he became one of radio's largest brokers.

"The thing that most people remember him for was probably the least important thing he did," Harrison said. "He was extremely influential in the consolidation movement of radio that happened during the 1990s [and] was the broker on a gigantic proportion of the deals that came down in that deregulated time — as those big radio companies were getting bigger and bigger."

Harrison — who grew up in Farmingdale and Freeport — added that "his work at WMCA is legendary because that was a legendary time in radio, with a legendary group of DJs. Those of us who lived through that time have a tremendous emotional attachment to it."

According to the trade reports, Stevens is survived by his wife, Frankie, and children, Kristin (Stevens) Sexton, Christopher Stevens and Victoria (Stevens) Chapman.