R.I.P.: Wayne Perkey, Longtime WHAS Louisville Morning Host

Ray Perkey

Wayne Perkey, for 30 years the "morning man" on WHAS 840 AM in Louisville and a longtime host of the WHAS Crusade for Children, has died at age 84.

The Courier-Journal reports his family confirmed his death Sunday.

Perkey had been recently hospitalized with COVID-19 and his condition had become critical, according to two of his five children, Dr. Rebecca Booth and Cecil Booth.

Because Perkey had been vaccinated, received a booster shot and had been cautious about exposure, the family was surprised when he recently contracted the virus.

"It kind of blindsided us," Rebecca Booth said.

Terry Meiners, his friend and longtime colleague at NewsRadio 840 WHAS, said Perkey was an icon of local broadcasting.

"He's the voice of a generation," said Meiners, who hosts an afternoon show at WHAS. "The thing I want people to know about Wayne is that his effervescent personality set the tone for the whole staff at the radio station.

"He was the positive ray of sunshine that everyone else sort of fell in line with."

Perkey was, Meiners said, "the perfectly named radio host."

A Tennessee native, Perkey came to work at WHAS in 1969 after learning about WHAS from a trade magazine while working in broadcast in Mobile, Alabama. He would remain as the 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. morning host at WHAS until 1999, when he retired.