R.I.P.: Deborah Richards, Former Kicks 101.5 Atlanta Morning Co-Host

(1962-2024)

Deborah Richards, part of a popular Atlanta country morning show in the 1990s, has died at age 62.

Her son Jarrett Smith said she died last week after a series of medical issues likely related to lupus, according to Rodney Ho at ajc.com.

Richards, whose legal name outside of radio was Julie Longcore, joined Kicks 101.5 (which is now New Country 101.5) in 1984 covering news and worked with a series of morning hosts until James “Moby” Carner arrived in 1991.

Moby’s larger-than-life personality, along with his interplay with Richards and traffic guy Jim Vann, captured the Kicks audience during the Garth Brooks/Shania Twain era of country music.

“Listeners would tell me that it sounded like we were just hanging out at a Waffle House having breakfast,” Richards told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2023 after Moby died.

“She’s the calming feminine perspective,” Moby said in 2001 to the AJC. “I can always tell when I go over the line because she gives me this look.”

Vann called her “one of the most delightful people I’ve ever known. She loved meeting people at remotes.”

In 2001, Richards left radio of her own accord and opened a voice-over business. She taped radio commercials and narrations for industrial and corporate videos. She also taught voice-over work to others at the Connecticut School of Broadcasting.

Richards started doing radio at age 17 at a small Tennessee AM station in the 1970s “sandwiched between a cemetery and a pig farm,” her son said. She later worked at a station in Buford before moving to Kicks.