This piece originally appeared in Barrett Media, on February 16, 2024, three years after Rush Limbaugh’s death.
One weekday afternoon in 1987 Rush was very excited and yet nervous. Gingerly stepping into the river’s edge he admitted, “I’ve never been in a natural body of water, just swimming pools.”
Bob and I laughed.
“Isn’t Cape Girardeau on the Mississippi?” Bob asked.
“Yeah, but we just saw it from the car,” Rush explained. We all laughed again.
Summer days in Sacramento are long and hot. My KFBK morning show partner Bob Nathan and I spent many of those days in the 1980s and 90s after our air shift rafting on the American River as it gently meandered from Sunrise Blvd. to Goethe Park. We shared the two-hour ride that day with our 9-noon colleague and friend, Rush Limbaugh.
We were surprised that Rush agreed to join us on the river. Picnics, backyard barbecues, and such were never his thing. His idea of camping was a fully air-conditioned room at Ramada Inn.
He did attend my outdoor Western-themed wedding in 1988 wearing a tie and sports coat while everyone else in the crowd dressed like the cast of Gunsmoke. Rush stood out like a turd in a punch bowl. Somebody took his tie and slapped a cheap cowboy hat on his head. He wore it proudly.
A few months earlier, when I talked him into letting me take him to the Yellow Rose honky tonk, he purchased his first-ever pair of blue jeans for the occasion and wore them with his Pittsburgh Steelers jersey, which was the only shirt he owned that didn’t have buttons. It was as country as Rush ever got. While everyone else in the Rose was wearing boots, Rush sported tasseled loafers.
As we floated downstream in Bob’s four-man raft the talk turned to our radio careers. It was 1987. Rush was working from 9 am to noon, making around $32,000 a year. On the river that day an SPF-slathered, 36-year-old Rush Limbaugh confided to Bob and me his plan to get a raise. He figured he might be worth $50,000 to KFBK. Management didn’t agree though his ratings were enormous. Between 5 AM and Noon, the Dave & Bob morning show followed by Rush, KFBK was outbilling every other station in town by a long shot.
Five years later Rush Hudson Limbaugh III was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame and on his way to collecting five Marconi Awards while becoming the wealthiest, most famous radio personality in history.
Unfamiliar as he was with buoyancy and weight distribution skills Rush caused the raft to overturn in a gentle riffle of the river that didn’t deserve to be called rapids. In that spot, the water was moving swiftly but only four feet deep. Bob and I came up laughing though we had lost our beer cooler but tossed into a Class I river Rush was in a Class VI panic. Not only had he never been in a natural body of water, turns out he also couldn’t swim and truly thought he was going to drown. We righted the raft and shoved him back in. The next day Rush spent the entire three hours of his show talking about how Dave and Bob saved him from the watery grave of the Grim Reaper.
Bob and I got hate mail.
One day after our air shifts when I was also the Program Manager at KFBK, I took Rush to lunch and said, “I’m not going to tell you how to do your show. It’s your show. But, if you don’t find something else to talk about besides politics your career will go right down the toilet.”
20 years later I reminded him of that. He laughed and thanked me for not derailing his fame and fortune.
In my defense, it was the 80s. Local talk radio was about local issues, events, and movie reviews. Nobody had ever gone on the air at a lone radio station in America to spend every day criticizing national politicians and Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Rush did and shockingly it worked, big time.
After he became the Rush Limbaugh the world came to know, worship, and despise, he often described himself on the air as “a lovable little fuzzball.” Bob and I hung that ironic description on him because we knew and loved the guy as most of his audience never could. Believe what you want, he really was a good man.
While the rest of the world was learning to deify or hate him, Rush became godfather to Bob Nathan’s newborn daughter. In social settings, Rush was quiet and humble. He was a wallflower, really, often found quietly seated alone, smiling in a corner nursing a drink. He happily got to his feet to greet mingling guests who approached him, as strangers at a party do. He enjoyed meeting new people and was genuinely interested in them, he just wasn’t good at starting the conversation.
Bob Nathan and I talked a bit about Rush recently on my podcast. I also did an episode with Kitty O’Neal, who was Rush’s producer throughout his years in Sacramento. When WABC in New York signed him, he turned to Kitty for support, inviting her to join him there. She declined but still talks of those early days with Rush lovingly yet honestly.
“In the early years, I would say he was unsure of himself and lacking in self-confidence. But as he found his footing, he established himself as a maverick in talk radio and changed the medium as we know it.”
He left and she stayed. Now, 40 years later, Kitty is still the afternoon news personality on KFBK. She shared with me her insights into his transformation from the local star to the global phenomenon.
“Working with Rush — in the early days, before his meteoric rise — he came across as an entertainer who enjoyed poking fun at people, societal trends, and politics. I felt like the audience took him more seriously than he took himself. Much of what he said was tongue-in-cheek and he was playing the prankster. But the more political he got, the more the conservative-leaning listeners regarded him as their spokesperson. That’s the role he eventually assumed which catapulted him to fame, but I think the secret to his success was that he played it with humor and irreverence.”
There are still a lot of Rush Limbaugh copycats on talk radio and a few uniquely talented conservative talk stars who were influenced by Rush but developed their own styles. Today’s cultural obsession with politics, for better and worse, was Limbaugh’s creation.
The difference between Rush and the rest was, as Kitty said, his humor and irreverence. First and foremost he was an entertainer. This is what his copycats often don’t get. Rush started as a top-40 disc jockey calling himself Jeff Christie. (Rush Limbaugh was his real name.) In those days top-40 jocks always made the best news and talk hosts because of their mastery of radio performance: focus, timing, delivery, style, and how to hit a punchline. Early in his career, Rush was one of those masters. While he eventually developed as a preacher of conservatism, he never lost his focus on entertaining people first. That’s what radio does. Rush learned and excelled at it.
One question always comes up when people find out that I knew Rush: “Did he believe the stuff he said or was he just putting on an act?”
My answer goes like this:
Rush was a once-in-a-lifetime radio entertainer. In that respect yes, he was performing. Did he believe the controversial things he said? Absolutely, 100%. Why do we imagine you can’t do both? I guess because nobody else ever has.
There’s one more thing you should know about Rush Limbaugh. As Kitty told me, “He was extremely generous and philanthropic with his fortune, but unrelentingly critical with his tongue.”
Rush quietly and often anonymously gave much of his fortune to many worthy non-political causes. He didn’t want that side of him to become public, it was nobody’s business. Besides, he had an image to maintain. As unbelievable as it seems to most people who only knew him by that image he was also sincerely humble, a side of himself he protected from public scrutiny.
The Rush Limbaugh I knew as a good friend was a good human being. Even his most vocal critics were surprised after meeting him by his decency and respect.
I didn’t agree with everything he said but radio and America are better today for his influence. I miss him.
I'm an old radio guy who used to listen to, admire and even be envious of Rush. It's nice to read something from one who knew him in radio, before the big time. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you for your story, Rosemary. Rush would have loved it.