Providence Radio: Longtime PRO-FM Morning Host Giovanni Is Retiring

Long-running Providence morning radio host “Giovanni” announced Thursday that he will retire from 92 PRO-FM April 29 after 50 years with the station, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary on the same day.

According to a posting at the PRO-FM website, Daniel Centofanti, known to his listeners and fans as “Giovanni” has hosted “Giovanni in the Morning” for 25 of those years, and became a fan of WPRO AM when he was 12 years old.

“The first encounter I had with this radio station is I wrote a letter to Salty Brine, (the longer-running WPRO morning host) I was 12 years old, and I said, “can I have a tour of the station?” he told Gene Valicenti in an on-air interview. “This is when the station was down in Providence on Mason Street, which doesn’t exist anymore. So I put my phone number in there.

“Unbeknownst to my mother, the phone rings one morning and guess who’s on the phone? Well, it’s Salty. He invited us, so my dad and I came down to the station, I got a tour. And ever since then I’ve been enamored with this particular outfit, WPRO, I got to be friendly with the people who work here, and you know the rest,” he said.

“I never did a shift on WPRO, that’s the ironic part, that’s the station that propelled me to want to be in radio,” he said.

He began on air at WPRO-FM in 1974.

“I remember the first song I ever played, it’s “My Maria” by B.W. Stevenson.”

In 2009, he was inducted into the Rhode Island Radio Hall of Fame after 35 years on the air.

Gio added that management was highly supportive of his decision to retire. “As you know, radio can be brutal, one day you’re here, the next day you’re gone, but not with this company, they were really nice to me.”