Bob Kevoian Dies at 75: Indiana Radio Legend’s Lasting Impact on Generations of Listeners

Huge news over the weekend. Sad news actually came down late Friday evening and that was that. Bob Kevoian, one half of the legendary Bob and Tom show, passed away at the age of 75. He had battled cancer for several years. And look, our show is Indiana news, politics and government. And those of you who are longtime listeners and viewers, you know, primarily that's what we do, politics and government. But the news is the first part of it and the response to the passing of Bob and I said, this has to be the lead story that we talk about on the show today.

Why Bob Kevoian’s Passing Resonates Beyond Indiana Media

Because, look, guys, there's very few things that surprise me with anything Indiana media anymore. But the response to Bob Kevorkian's passing just blew me away because not only did all the media people pay tribute to him and talk about some of the things we'll talk about here in just a moment, but I was blown away by the regular people, like the regular everyday folks, the amount of people who had incredible things to say about Bob Kevorkian, not just his radio talent, but who he was as a human being and the impact that he had on people and the personal accounts of the numerous times Bob Kevorkian went out of his way to people who were complete strangers to him. They'd see him at a restaurant, or they'd see him out at an event, and he would just pull up a chair and start talking to complete and total strangers, and I look. It warmed my heart to see the amount of people I was talking to somebody over the weekend, and I said, there is a bigger response to the passing of Bob Kevoian than if a governor or senator had passed away. And it speaks to the profound impact that Bob and Tom had on this city. I never met Bob Kevoian personally, but I have a very close connection to the Bob and Tom show because Jay Baker is one of my best friends and radio mentor. And if you guys enjoy, I've enjoyed my radio career, enjoyed the stuff at WIBC. Those of you who go way back, who enjoyed the stuff even before WIBC, so much of that has come out of what I learned and what I picked up from Jay Baker. And many of you know, Jay Baker was an integral part of the Bob and Tom show at the height of the Bob and Tom show. Dick's Picks, The Love Brothers. All of these great things that Jay did that was a part of Bob and Tom at their height of local dominance. And that's what the Bob and Tom show was. It was local dominance in the 1980s and the 1990s, Bob and Tom reached heights in this city that were never before seen and quite frankly will never, ever not only never be seen again, they'll never be close. The radio landscape, the media landscape has changed way too much. There are far fewer people listening to the radio every day. These guys were doing a 25 plus share. That means a fourth of the radios at one point in the 80s and 90s, one out of every four radios was tuned to Bob and Tom at a time where radio was arguably at its peak influence. These guys were the most important voice, not only in the city but in the state. And it's fascinating to me because Bob had been retired for ten years. And I think that's one of the things that really caught me off guard, our industry people, they get remembered, right? Sort of, kind of. But usually when a guy's been gone for a long period of time, so many people, quite frankly, move on, they get other listening habits. And in some cases, especially with the older generation, which are now the original Bob and Tom listeners, they are the older generation, they pass away. And the fact that Bob Kevoian had been out of the radio spotlight, the public spotlight really in terms of doing a daily radio show for ten years, and that there was just this outpouring of love and support and emotion from people, it just speaks to the life that this guy lived. And I think there's two facets to Bob Kevoian and why he was so fondly remembered. And I want to talk a little bit about both of them.

The Bob and Tom Show’s Unmatched Influence on Indianapolis Radio

And first of all, obviously, you get to the radio component, the radio side, Bob and Tom and I, we talk a lot about like Mount Rushmore lists on our show, like the Mount Rushmore of this or the Mount Rushmore of that. Bob and Tom are certainly Mount Rushmore figures, and I put them as one guy, even though they're two separate guys. But it's one entity. Bob and Tom are Mount Rushmore in a variety of places. They're Mount Rushmore, obviously, in the history of most influential people in the city of Indianapolis. I'm talking politicians. I'm talking sports stars. I'm talking the whole thing. They're Mount Rushmore. I think of most influential people in the history of our state. And again, I'm talking politicians. I'm talking athletes, I'm talking coaches. I'm talking anything. And they're probably Mount Rushmore in terms of the most influential people in the history of our radio business. They're certainly right up there with rush. They're right up there with Howard Stern. You know, you go way, way back, guys like Marconi who essentially invented the airwaves, right? But these guys had such an impact and they were so different and they pushed the envelope. But in the early days of Bob and Tom, they were cool because they pushed the envelope inside the city we knew and loved. And the amazing thing, and the more I thought about the outpouring, I just kept scrolling through Facebook and it was just one person after another. And again, far beyond the media people. I would have expected it from the media people. And you got it from so many people. But the regular people, it was and this was what. And then it started reading this and go, well, of course. Right. Bob and Tom were unique because they came in in the mid 1980s. 1983 they come to Indianapolis. You've still got the greatest generation that's still working sort of at the end of their working lives. So they're consuming Bob and Tom. You've got the baby boomer generation who is sort of starting their ascend into the workforce. They're consuming Bob and Tom. And then you have my generation, the millennials, the Gen Xers, who were kids. But because your parents and grandparents consumed Bob and Tom, you consumed it as well every day. So literally, this is amazing. You'll never see this ever again. You had three generations of people who were there their morning commute, their morning engagement, their morning waking. So many people my age were like, I remember my parents alarm going off. Like my memories of my childhood memories. 6 a.m. and this was me. And I was thinking, yes, damn it, this is me too. I can remember. So I grew up in a two story house and my bedroom, my parents bedrooms were upstairs. There was a little hallway between our bedrooms. And I can distinctly remember every morning as a kid hearing that alarm go off. And it was the old alarm where you'd hear like a little click before it would start playing music. Like you guys remember where the clock would move. It was a not a digital clock flip clock. Yes. Thank you. Jason. It was a flip clock. And I can remember hearing that it's like the memories Bob Kevin's passing triggered for me and hearing other people's memories. It was like one last great hurrah for Bob Kevoian, where for a guy who had such impact on the city. Look, I know I'm going all over the place with this. And I thought about this on the drive in this morning. How am I even going to do this? I was like, I'm just going to start talking because there's no great way to do this because there's so many areas to cover. But somebody was talking about this, I was like, yes, I remember this. I could can remember if I would wake up early hearing that flip of the clock, and then that alarm would kick on, and it would be the Bob and Tom show. And so you literally have three generations of people who have incredible memories about the content that Bob and Tom did. And one of the amazing things about Bob and Tom was they were ours, right? Even when they went nationally syndicated, at least in the early days of it, they still kept a local flavor to it. And as they grew, it was like a part of us grew with them. And obviously then by the 2000, by the time that came around, they got so big and they had to cut out the local content, and they just kind of, other than the, they still had local breaks that they would do related to Q 95. But three generations of people grew up hearing those guys laugh. They grew up having those guys make us laugh. And Tom was talking about this Friday night. I don't know if you guys have heard this. It's been posted. Wait until our show's over, but go listen to it afterwards. Q 95 posted it. Gunner whose see the afternoon guy now, he's been all over the place on the history of Q he's done a million different things. Gunner and Tom went live on the air Friday night at about 10:00, and I was listening to it. Somebody alerted me, say, hey, gunner and Tom are on and they're talking about Bob. And one of the things Tom was talking about was Bob and Tom were special. And this is an art that has been lost on our industry. It's been an art that's been lost in the podcasting side, certainly. I think a big portion of it is there are cameras in the room now, so it's harder for people to do this. Harder for people to train themselves to do it. It's been lost in the radio industry. It's been lost in television. They weren't, they were just two guys having a conversation with themselves. And you got to listen to it, especially the early stuff. And then obviously what they incorporated people like Jay Baker and Chick McGee and Kristi Lee. And then they became this sort of entourage of people after they grew quickly in the mid 80s. But it was always no matter what. Mark. Patrick, Mark Much all of those guys, Dog when Dog was in with them, Pat Carlini it was always like just friends having a conversation that you got the privilege of listening into.

How Bob Kevoian’s Personality and Kindness Defined His Legacy

And the thing about Bob was he was so damn nice and approachable. Jake Query who does the what does he do? He does the midday show on The Fan said. And I thought this was a perfect way to describe Bob. He said, take the. I think he said something like, take the ten best qualities of your ten closest friends, and that's Bob Kevoian. And I was like, you're seeing all these people post about him and talk about him, and their personal encounters with him. Some guy was like, I was sitting at a restaurant. Bob sits down. We didn't want to bother him. He just pulls up a chair and starts talking to us for 30 minutes. And it's just one account like this after another. Bob was the person you saw or you listen to on the radio. He was that friendly voice. He was that really decent and good human being. And so when I remember this conversation I had with my dad, this was 20 years ago and it was at a time. So I would have been in my early 20s, like all the guys that I grew up watching play sports were starting to retire like the Ken Griffey Jr, Frank Thomas, you know, that era of player. And I remember saying, man, this is really depressing. Like all these guys who grew up watching, they're retiring. And my dad looked at me and he was being very serious. He goes, just wait till they start dying. And I thought, well, that's kind of morbid. And then he said, no, no, no, it's like this, we had this conversation about this. He said, you know, literally these people, they live on for long periods as athletes, the autograph signings, the TV appearances. But he said there'll come a point where these guys start dying. And that really will start making you feel old and like a part of you has left. And that is true. It's happening more and more as I have entered my 40s. And that's sort of what it felt like Friday with the announcement that Bob Kevoian had passed away and there had been photos that had surfaced of him with Tom. He looked very thin. He looked very frail. Obviously, he'd been battling cancer for several years. But it was like, wow, a huge part of my childhood is gone. A huge part of growing up is no longer here. Bob and Tom still exists. It's still a radio show. But if we're being honest with ourselves, it hasn't been the same for probably the past 15 years. Certainly as they've grown, they've gone into syndication, they've had the TV show. It would never be the same. There's no way to make it the same. You can't have the show they had in 1990. When you're on whatever, they're on 60, 70. I don't know the number. I'm not trying to insult them. If I'm low, I don't know how many stations they're on now, but you just can't have that show. You can't do a show that's Indianapolis eccentric, but it really says something about these two guys and the impact that they had. That one, Bob's been out of the business for ten years. The show hasn't been the show for close to 20. The show that people grew up with, the show that people became men and women with, the show that people grew old with, that show hasn't been the show in probably 20 years. And yet just an outpouring of love and support and emotion and happiness. And one other thing I wanted to touch on, and I know I spent a lot of time on this, but I'm telling you guys, in the history of the city of Indianapolis, there are a few people of any that had a bigger impact and were more important and meant more to more people over a long period of time than Bob and Tom. I mean, guys, for the younger people that are watching, I picked up my car this morning. Guy that had been working on the car and checked me out. He pulls the thing up. He goes, are you the Rob Kendall? Yeah, that's what it says on my birth certificate. And he goes, man, I just love you. He goes, it is you. He starts looking at me, goes, it is you. And then a guy in line behind me pulls up and goes, look. He just goes, hey, I'm going home to watch you later today. And this is like you lose track of the impact that what we do has on people. And by the way, this guy's 37. And so when I say for the young people that are watching, there are a lot of younger people, we can see the demos, we can see the numbers of people who watch. There are a lot of younger people who do watch, especially now that we're on YouTube and on the podcast platform, what we do. But one of the things, and look, I've only scratched a fraction of the listenership, the popularity, if you want to call it the notoriety, whatever word you want to use, that Bob and Tom had. I don't ever pretend to be on the same planet as those guys, but it is easy for us in our business to lose track of the impact that we have on people. It's easy for us because so much of it is like, to me, it's just Jason and I sitting in a room and now obviously I'm talking directly to a camera. It's different now. I don't have a partner in the sense of when I was working with someone else or someone else was in the room for all those years. And look, I've been candid with you guys. This is the show I always wanted to do, but you lose track. And I did a morning show. We talked about this a little bit in North Carolina where I was by myself. So you lose track wherever, whether you're with somebody, by yourself, whatever, that there are thousands and thousands of people that you're having an impact on. And we do on this show now, as we said, between 2500 and 3000 listeners and viewers a day across the platforms, which is phenomenal. It's amazing for a podcast who's getting off the ground. When I was on IBC, shorter time listening for each person, but we were doing tens of thousands of people. In our business, it's easy to lose track of the impact that you have on people, that you become a part of someone's family, that you become a part of their life, that there is this connection that you sort of become a voice for people. And Bob and Tom were not a voice sort of like I am in the political sense. That wasn't what they did, but they were something much different. They were like family. They were like your friends, your neighbors. And I think Bob Kevoian was always very cognizant of that. I think he was always very aware of that. And that is why nobody, not one person, has a bad thing to say about this guy. It was his talent. It was his ability to entertain. And it was his kindness and his generosity as a human being. And man, what a life to have lived. To know that when you pass. So he was surrounded by his loved ones. He went listening to his all time favorite Beatles album. And you go knowing that in a positive way, where almost every single person that probably millions of people Bob had contact with in his life through the radio and in person contact, pretty much every single one of them loved you. You had a positive impact on their life. Just what a life lived. And so I know we spent a lot of time on this today, but Bob and Bob and Tom, they have earned it. They deserve it. And God bless Bob Kevoian and the six degrees of separation of Bob. If there's no Bob Kevoian, there's probably no Jay Baker. And if there's no Jay Baker, there's no Rob Kendall. So I thought it was worth spending some time on.