R.I.P.: Steve Kelly, Palm Springs Radio Personality

Steve Kelly

When Steve Kelly learned earlier this year he had Stage 4 colon cancer and had perhaps a year to live, he did the one thing he knew how to do best: He started talking to people from behind a microphone.

“One of the things I love to do is tell stories,” Kelly said in a column he wrote for The Desert Sun in May announcing his diagnosis and his plans for a podcast on his situation. “I have always loved a good tale. And I think going through this experience will give me some great material.”

The Desert Sun reports Kelly, whose real name was Steve Vericker, lost his battle with cancer and kidney failure Saturday in hospice care in a Rancho Mirage assisted living facility, ending a career in desert radio that stretched more than three decades. Kelly was 64.

A desert transplant who never lost touch with his East Coast roots or his Irish heritage, Kelly was a personality both on the air and in the control booth at desert radio stations, most notably KPSI-AM in the 1990s and into the 2000s. A graduate of Rutgers University in New Jersey – Kelly was inducted into the WRSU Hall of Fame at the university earlier this year – Kelly was working at a local bookstore when he started calling into local radio shows. One call was heard by another radio host, Gary Stone.

“His calls were so brilliant, I sought him out,” said Stone, at the time working at KPSL. “Long story short, we ended up asking him to get on the radio with me.”

From there, Kelly formed a partnership with legendary Los Angeles newspaper and radio personality Bud Furillo, and the two hosted a sport talk show with Kelly producing, first on KPSL and later on KPSI. When that sports show ended, Kelly stayed at KPSI as program director, bringing his East Coast background to Coachella Valley radio.

“There were people who were in radio, knew how to do radio, but some of them didn’t have an appreciation for the rest of the world radio as Steve did,” said Mike Meenan, news director for R and R Broadcasting in the 1980s and 1990s, the group that owned KPSI. “Remember, he was raised in the east, mostly in the New York area. So he knew what was going on with New York radio. And he did love it.”

Meenan recalled that Kelly was not as interested in being on the air as he was just being in radio. At times at KPSI, on weekends or when other people were unavailable, Kelly would work the control boards for other shows. He also would book guests and produce other shows, easily moving between sports talk and community news and politics. Kelly even went to New York City on an anniversary for 9/11 to do reports for KPSI.