Bobby Jack Murphy, who has been an on-air radio personality for close to 45 years, is retiring from WAKY and WLVK after his broadcasts Friday morning, reports The News Enterprise.
“It’s given me a good life and allowed me to do things I’ve always wanted to do,” he said about radio and the experiences it gave him. “I didn’t think I would ever be this lucky, but it worked out. I’ve really been blessed.”
Born Robert Lynch in Louisville and raised in Marion County, Murphy remembers the first time he fell in love with radio.
“I don’t know how old I was,” he said, guessing he was 7, 8 or 9 when his mother would take him along to her hair appointments to play with other children in the neighborhood. “They lived just up the road from the local station and their dad was on the radio. So we rode bikes down to the radio station because it had snacks.”
He’s worked under other recognizable voices and notable names in radio such as Jerry David Melloy at WHAS, Johnny Randolph at WAKY and Coyote Calhoun at WAMZ, who gave Murphy his on-air name.
“That was a magical time,” he said of his stint with WAMZ in Louisville in the ’90s and early 2000s. “WAMZ owned the radio. Country exploded again with Garth (Brooks) and Clint Black and Brooks and Dunn and the free concerts. To be there when that time was going on was just cool.”
René Bell, managing partner and general manager of the local stations, said “He’s going to leave a big hole,” she said. “He’s an amazing friend to everyone he meets and he has a huge heart for community … anything he can help out with and spends a lot of personal time doing just that.”
Bell said Murphy has one of the smoothest voices in radio, making him hard to replace.
After the death of his wife, Debbie Lynch, and his father in August, Murphy said he decided it was time to take a step back from work.
“You just start re-evaluating,” he said. “Do you wait and retire — I mean, I don’t want to stop working — or do work for a few more dollars.”
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