At a robust 71, Bob Conrad has been the wryly humorous baritone manning the mic at Cleveland’s first classical music station for over 40 years. Yet for a man whose metier is the airwaves, and who has received three honorary doctorates for his work in the arts, he’s managed to keep a very low profile. When we caught up with him in his sunny, memento-filled Warrensville Heights office—at what two generations of Northeast Ohioans affectionately call “radio ranch”—he was more than willing to share his views on classical music, how broadcasting has evolved, and how he’s grown older without growing old.

Back then, Kankakee was a town of about 25,000 then, and there was just one high school. When I was there, I was editor of the school paper, and on student council, and on the stage crew, and I was always writing skits for pep rallies and assemblies and things like that.

Kankakee is hardly the cultural capitol of Illinois…
[Laughs] Oh definitely!

…so where’d you get your taste for classical music?
My parents listened to classical music on the radio, and I collected records—first 78s and then, when they came out, LPs—and basically what I was collecting was classical music. [Laughs] But I’m not a musician. I can’t play a note and I can’t sing a note, but I can narrate.

The first album I ever bought was the score for the [1936] documentary “The Plow that Broke the Plains,” that Virgil Thomson wrote the music for. Thomson used Tchaikovsky and Mozart and Aaron Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait,” which I’ve always loved because it’s narrated.

You grew up during WWII. How do you think that’s shaped who you are today?
Many of my memories of WWII are a result of radio broadcasts. But radio was completely different then; it was drama programs, and afternoon serials, and documentaries like “The March of Time,” and music shows. I remember listening to the NBC Symphony broadcasts and the New York Philharmonic broadcasts and thinking I’d like to be a commentator for an orchestra like that. [Note: Robert Conrad has been the radio commentator for the Cleveland Orchestra since 1965, longer than anyone has been the commentator for an orchestra in the history of radio.]

But it wasn’t just entertainment. There was news, too. I was listening on the day of the D-Day Invasion and on the day of President Roosevelt’s death. They canceled all the regular radio programs and commercials and did special broadcasts…I remembered what they did, and that’s the reason I knew exactly what to do when President Kennedy died.

Were you a ham radio kid?
Not at all. I was more interested in producing shows and performing and writing scripts for shows than the technical stuff. And today, well, it’s the same thing. I can operate the equipment in the radio station, but…if something goes wrong with it, I can’t repair it. [Laughs] I’m totally lacking in the technical area.

So how did you get interested in radio, then?
I’d been enamored of radio as long as I can remember. When I was five, I asked my mother what it took to be a radio announcer and she said I had to learn how to pronounce all the words in the dictionary, which I have yet to do.

I made toy microphones out of toilet paper rolls. I wrote scripts and read them into my “mic.” I had a play radio station. And, when I was 14, they built a radio station—WKAN—in Kankakee and I went down and hung around until they gave me a job. Basically, what I was doing was carrying the equipment for the basketball broadcasts and keeping score for the announcers.

I got to know the people at the radio station, and they created a program for me, called High School Matinee, on Saturday afternoons. Then, the year I graduated from high school I got the vacation-replacement announcer’s job. That meant that when the regular announcers went on vacation I took over and did their shows. I did everything there was to do at the station; man-in-the-street interviews, telephone quiz programs, even a live country and western band show—as Sagebrush Bob.

That was pretty heady stuff for a 17-year-old.

Was there anyone who guided you into a career in radio?
There were two people. One was a man at WKAN, Sid Mandel. He sort of mentored me and he’s the one who got the station to create the Saturday program I was on…He left when I was a junior, but I kept in contact with him all the way through college.

The other person was a speech tutor, Beryl Danforth. I took private lessons with her, and to tell the truth, I don’t know why she was living there in Kankakee. She really helped me work in developing my voice—diction, delivery, things like that. [Laughs] I owe her my baritone, stentorian, mid-west American accentless announcer-like voice. And I still do some of the speech and diction exercises she taught me…Her training really prepared me for performances at school, and for college. As a matter of fact, when I went to college in many of my classes I was doing stuff that I’d already learned from her.

When you went to college, were you aiming for a degree in broadcasting?
Yes, and I went to Northwestern University [in Evanston, Illinois] on the advice of Beryl Danforth because she said it was one of the best schools in the nation.

And you know, the “other” Robert Conrad [of Wild, Wild West fame] went there too. He was a year or two behind me. Over the years we have been confused for each other and I know I’ve disappointed a lot of airline reservation clerks.

…Once, we were at a restaurant at Playhouse Square, having a birthday party for our oldest daughter, Carolyn, and the waitress came rushing up and said Robert Conrad and his children are coming in. And I said: No, we are already here.

A couple of minutes later, the actor and his two sons came in and they sat down at the table next to us and we talked for a bit. When I told him I sometimes got his mail he said: Well, do I pay my bills?
But you know, his name isn’t really Robert Conrad, it’s Konrad Robert Faulkowski.

If you hadn’t gone into broadcasting, what would you have gone into?
I don’t know. I’d zeroed in on it so early. There was one point in college, though, when I got enamored with anthropology. That was fleeting, though I did get a minor in it.

It makes sense, though, that I was thinking about anthropology. When I became an announcer you needed a broad appreciation of what was going on in the world and of the world’s cultures. Today, everything is ultra-specialized: The guy who does the news doesn’t do the music show and the guy who does the classical music show doesn’t do the rock show.

So, if you hadn’t gone into broadcasting…
…I might possibly be an anthropologist.

After college what did you do?
I was in the army in Hawaii between the Korean War and Vietnam. I was in a psychological warfare unit, the 14th Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet Battalion. It was a 9-5 office job and I was defending liberty from the beach at Waikiki. My job was to come up with ideas for broadcasts and leaflets to drop on people if, for example, we accidentally dropped a bomb on China.

After work, I’d go off to work at a local radio station in Honolulu. The other people in the unit would play bridge.

About the time I was due to get out of the army, NBC sponsored a contest for the most beautiful voice in America and friends suggested I enter it. I won for Hawaii and there was a trip to Las Vegas for the state winners. The top winner was a lady from Los Angeles; I came in second. The prizes were trips—I choose a trip to Europe—and a grand piano. I sold the piano and turned it into a Volkswagen.

Because of the contest, I figured that NBC was going to hire me, so I went to back to Chicago, to WFMT, a classical music station where I’d replaced Mike Nichols before I’d gone into the army, and waited for their call.

What brought you to Cleveland?
In the summer of ’61, I got a call out of the blue from a guy from Cleveland, Pat Patrick. He was negotiating to buy WDGO, an FM station. He was in sales and marketing and didn’t know anything about programming. He’d worked in Detroit and called some people he knew there looking for a program manager and they gave him my name.

…I came to Cleveland, looked at the station, which was located at Eastgate Shopping Center then, and said I’d come. Then the owners sold it to someone else and Pat and I continued on our own separate ways.
In February of ’62, I got a call from one of the station’s new owners. They didn’t like running it, and wondered if Pat and I were still interested in it.

I got hold of Pat; we got together money from friends and family and by putting insurance policies in hock, and raised $20,000 to put down on WDGO. When we bought the station there were houses in Cleveland that were more expensive. But back then, FM was zilch.

…I came to Cleveland on July 17th—my birthday—and started running WDGO. We immediately went to the FCC and changed the call letters. First we asked for WCLE, but that’s in Cleveland, Tennessee. Then we asked for WCLD, but that’s in Cleveland, Mississippi. Then we asked for WCLV.
I’m still surprised at how many people don’t make the connection.

That was a pretty big leap of faith.
Maybe. It’s amazing how circumstances will determine your life, but one of the things that I wanted to do was become involved in ownership of a radio station and when this came up, well, I couldn’t not do it.
When we took over the station in ’62, we had a vision of what it could be. We knew we had the ability and the facility to do good classical programming, and our view was that the station should be more interested in programming than in the commercials that would make the programming possible.

We ran the station far more by the heart that by the ledger. But if we’d run it by the ledger, it wouldn’t be here now…We made it successful…and with the creation of the WCLV Foundation, we are sure that the station is going to continue.

In April of 1965, you did an on-air editorial on a bill that had been introduced in Congress to set aside the 1964 Supreme Court’s one-man/one vote decision. Why did you feel a classical radio station should be speaking out on a political issue?
Over the years, we have done that a lot, and we’ve taken positions on various other subjects, too. For instance, when Issue One, on support for the arts, was on the ballot last spring, we supported that. That’s where our heart is.

But back then [1963] there was a Federal regulation that radio stations could present views on issues. If you did that, however, you had to give the other side and equal opportunity to air their views. You had to balance things. Some stations chose not to editorialize, and that was their right…[We felt] it was our obligation as a station to present opinions on controversial subjects…And our audience is business professionals and well-educated people, so it’s a good audience to do editorials with.

In 2001, you and the other owners of Radio Seaway, Inc—which owned WCLV (FM)--converted the station into the WCLV Foundation. What is a non-profit able to do that for-profit WCLV couldn’t do?
The value of radio stations in major markets skyrocketed due to the buying frenzy that set off in 1996 when Congress rewrote the rules on station ownership.

Most of the classical radio stations were established by moms and pops, or in our case pops and pops, in the 60s and 70s because that’s the kind of radio station that they wanted to operate and they had, if you will, a mission. They weren’t just running a station, they were promoting a culture…

…By 2000, we had people beating on our doors wanting to buy the station. Our answer was always: We like being the only locally-owned radio station in Cleveland, and we felt that we’d become somewhat of a community institution and that what we were doing was valuable to a number of institutions and organizations—Cleveland Orchestra, the Play House, the Cleveland Museum of Art, all the arts community here.

Then one day someone offered us $40 million. We gulped a lot.

That said to us that our Class B frequency—95.5 FM—was more valuable than the radio station, so maybe we can trade it for something else, and still stay on the air. What we traded for was 104.9 FM, which is in Avon—less power than what we had—and a pile of money.

That’s when we created the non-profit WCLV Foundation and donated the stock—valued at that time at $14.5 million—of Radio Seaway, Inc., which owns WCLV, to it. The Foundation shares the money with several of the arts institutions—including the art museum and the orchestra—here in the city.

When you made the station trade, you got two stations. Why did you get rid of the second one?
It was a big band AM station, but the demographic for the music was the over-65 demographic and it was shrinking, and besides that, advertisers didn’t seem to be interested in that demographic. They want the 18-49 males or women 18-35. It got to the point where financially the AM station was beginning to impact on the FM station. We thought about changing the format, but Salem Communications, which is the company we got WRMR from, approached us to buy it back. They offered us $10 million. It was an offer that we, reluctantly, couldn’t refuse.

…We’d have loved it if the big band station had been a smashing success. I love Arty Shaw and Rosemary Clooney and Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman, and all that music. [Laugh] And my wife, Jean, is really mad at me because we had to let it go.

How did you meet Jean?
I met her after I got out of the army. A friend I was working with at WFMT had a girlfriend who worked at the Chicago Welfare Department, where my wife-to-be also worked. His girlfriend didn’t like the girl I was dating at that time, so she arranged a blind date between Jean and me. We went out and, as they say, the rest is history.

We were married in 1959 and had 5 kids [their son died recently]. We have 4 grandkids, and another’s on the way. All of them are here in town, except one daughter and grandchild. They live in Chicago.

You are an instructor at Cleveland Institute of Music. What do you teach there, and, more to the point, why are you teaching?
The course is called broadcast procedures and I started teaching it quite a while ago [1989].
I went to [CIM president] David Cerone and said: You’ve got an audio engineering course here, and they are learning how to record concerts in concert halls and things like that, but they need to have some training in what’s happening in a radio station, too. He thought that was a pretty dandy idea.

I teach how to write a script and put together and tape a radio program…The class was intended for audio students, but all of a sudden I started getting musicians—violinists and cellists—and now I think I’ve got more musicians in the class than audio and technical students.

The feedback I’m getting from students is that what they learn in class enables them to become good self-marketers and self-promoters. For me, it’s a really enjoyable class because it’s an opportunity to pass on 50-60 years of experience to people who are just starting out.

You have been, well for lack of a better way to put it, “the voice of culture” in Cleveland for over 40 years. How do you feel about that title?
It’s overemphasizing what my function has been at the station. WCLV has been the voice of culture and it has many voices. But I see what you mean. For years I had a great opportunity to do a lot of the on-air things here—especially the orchestra broadcasts—and I was the programming director, too, so the concepts and the shows and the way things were done were mine. But I’m just one of the voices. And it’s always been that way.

You mentioned that you’ve stepped back from your duties at the station.
[Laughs] Yes, but I’m still coming in regularly, but now I’m concentrating on what I want to do. I produce “The Weekend Radio Show,” I narrate the Cleveland Orchestra broadcasts, and I’m producing programs that I’m really interested in, such as the upcoming Apollo’s Fire Christmas Concert. I’ve definitely pulled back, but I’m always busy.

What are your hobbies and interests outside radio and broadcasting?
I’ve got a model railroad set up in one of the bedrooms at home. It’s an N[arrow] gage set, the WC & LV—Western Cuyahoga and Lorain Valley—line, and it was originally set up by a friend from Boston. But I've added track and done all the scenery, and put in buildings. And of course, there’s a radio tower with WCLV on it.

I subscribe to all the model train magazines and I go to shows whenever I can. [Laughs] But being a model builder, which is what this is all about, is basically a pretty solitary hobby.

You are fit and energetic. What do you do to stay that way?
I’m not as fit as I’d like. The doctor keeps telling me to lose 20 pounds. I try.

I eat well. I keep dried fruit around for snacks, and lunch is usually yogurt and fruit, and I don’t eat a lot of red meat. And when we go out, and we do that often, I skip dessert. [Laughs] But then I cheat at home—I’ve discovered macaroons.

For exercise, I ride a bicycle, and when Jean and I are in Florida, I walk a lot on the beach and we both swim just about every day. Jean has arthritis, so she likes to get in the pool and do the pool exercises and I do laps.

You’re 71. Are you thinking about retiring?
Definitely not. Everyone’s always asking me that—especially since we transferred the radio station to the WCLV Foundation—and I keep telling them: They are going to carry me out, feet first, from the broadcast booth at Severance Hall.

I’m having too much fun now because I’m not the person who has to worry about whether an announcer hasn’t shown up for the morning show or a special promo didn’t get on the air.

Who shaped your attitudes about what successful aging is all about?
I don’t think there has been anyone in particular who shaped my perception of what getting old is all about. I think my attitude about what successful aging is has just evolved over time. In fact, maybe I’ve sort of ignored aging.

I know that I’m 71, but everyone has a self image—mine, I think, is how I was in high school—and I don’t consider 71 to be a number that keeps me from doing things that I want to do. But at the same time, I realize I’ve been fortunate, health-wise. I come from pretty healthy stock—my mother just died, at 97, and my father died when he was 86—and I don’t have a major infirmity that prevents me from doing what I like doing.

And I’ve still got my voice. I know people in my business who have lost their voices and it’s been devastating to them.