R.I.P.: WXRT Chicago Radio Personality Leslie Witt

Leslie Witt

Leslie Witt, a DJ with encyclopedic music knowledge whose long career at WXRT 93.1 FM started in the late 1970s, is being mourned by listeners and fellow broadcasters.

Witt, 63, died Sunday of ovarian cancer, according to the Sun-Times.

Next to Terri Hemmert, she was WXRT’s longest-serving DJ, said fellow DJ Lin Brehmer, who said he’ll always recall “how excited she got over discovering a new artist.”

Hemmert, who has battled cancer herself, praised Ms. Witt in an online remembrance as “my hero” and “a woman of hope, strength and love.”

The Chicago native’s easy on-air personality, which earned her the nickname “the overnight angel,” reflected a gracious, kind spirit, friends said.

“She gave everybody the benefit of the doubt,” Brehmer said. “Whatever I wound up doing that involved Leslie, there was going to be no drama or stress. She was going to have a big smile on her face, and dispense compliments from the heart, not the head, and she was going to make everybody feel good.”

When Witt started out, “There weren’t a lot of women in radio,” especially rock radio, her husband said. After graduating from Deerfield High School and earning a communications degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she worked at WIBA-FM in Madison and WGRG-AM in Pittsfield, Massachusetts before WXRT.


In the 1980s, while doing weekends at WXRT, Ms. Witt also worked weekdays as a WBEZ news reporter until the 1987 birth of her daughter, Kay, Dixon said.