R.I.P.: Iowa Radio Icon Dottie Ray

Dottie Ray

Dottie Ray, the woman who united and informed Eastern Iowans for 15 minutes each day on KXIC 800 AM radio for 55 years, has died.

Station officials announced Ray’s death Tuesday. She was 93, according to The Gazette.

Until her 2014 retirement, Ray was host of a show that aired right before noon each day, updating Eastern Iowans on local events, artists and organizations.

“That’s an Iowa City icon lost,” said Lyle Muller, former editor of The Gazette and executive editor of IowaWatch, who knew Ray while he worked as a news director at KXIC in the late 1970s.

When the radio station was sold in 1980, the new owners decided they wanted to cancel Ray’s show because they didn’t see the value in it, Muller said.

“The action from advertisers was swift,” he added. “Advertisers called up the radio station and said we’re pulling all of our advertising.”

The Dottie Ray Show, which first aired in 1959, was back within a week.

“If anybody had anything going on in the community in Iowa City, they had to be on that Dottie Ray Show because that was where they heard about it,” Muller said.

From a post in her Iowa City apartment, Ray welcomed more than 32,000 guests into her living room through her always-open apartment door, waiting with a cup of coffee before she interviewed them for 15 minutes. Ray brought on guests to talk about fundraising events, non-profits, the arts and culture.

Children were among her favorite subjects.

“If I’d had my druthers, I would have only interviewed children all my life,” Ray said during her retirement radio broadcast at age 91.