Gary McKee, top-rated Atlanta radio host in ’70s, ’80s, dies at age 81

“He just owned the market,” said Dennis Winslow, mid-day host at 94Q from 1975 to 1981. “He had the hip morning show everyone had to listen to.”

McKee was on billboards and did TV specials. “I couldn’t wait to get to work every day,” he told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2014.

Credit: COURTESY OF FRIENDS OF GEORGIA RADIO

Credit: COURTESY OF FRIENDS OF GEORGIA RADIO

Back in 1981, McKee told the AJC that he didn’t do the job for money. “I’ve always worked for fun. And when you work for fun, you can’t help but be good at it.”

But he did make a good living during his heyday when media options were significantly smaller and he could draw up to 20% of the listening audience any given morning in metro Atlanta. At his peak in the 1980s, he was pulling in more than $400,000 a year, he said in 2014.

Reg Griffin, a former Atlanta radio host, said in 2014 he grew up listening to McKee, who dubbed himself the “Morning Mouth of the South.” Decades later, Griffin recalled regular lines from McKee’s morning crew (“There’s a lobster loose in here!” and “Better slow that car down … don’t come driving down through here like you crazy!”)

McKee “was transparent, so you felt like you knew him personally. We wanted him to succeed. In the ’70s and ’80s, he commanded Atlanta radio like Johnny Carson commanded national television,” Griffin added.

McKee, who grew up in Illinois, began his radio career at a station in Mount Carmel, Illinois, at age 17. After graduating from Eastern Illinois University in 1968, he served in the Army during the Vietnam War for two years. Honorably discharged, he worked briefly at radio stations in Pensacola, Florida and Cincinnati before jumping to WQXI in 1971 at age 26.

With a theater background, he decided to create an on-air character that “was a little salty, a bit of a wise-ass.” Behind the scenes, he demanded a good product from his staff. “People who didn’t commit themselves didn’t work with me long,” he said.

He said his best times were with Carr, Corry and Levitt, who worked with him from 1978 to 1987.

“Gary was an absolute dream to work with,” Levitt said. “We had a relationship where we could see each other through the glass wall of the two booths we were in and I always felt that the moment his mouth stopped moving, I could open my mouth. We had a rapport like that where we were completely in sync.”

After Levitt left, ratings started to sag. And once McKee met his future wife Anita, his priorities shifted.

“It’s not a matter of the audience accepting you. It’s you accepting the audience,” McKee said in 2014. “I stopped doing that. I just fell head over heels in love. She’s a knockout. So out of my class.”

Over the next six years, they had three children. 94Q changed formats and dropped McKee, who then tried his hand at a three-hour talk show on WSB-AM. He later worked at pop station B98.5 and rock station Z93 but he said he could never recapture the magic of 94Q.

Credit: AJC ARCHIVE

Credit: AJC ARCHIVE

In September 1998, McKee tried to raise $930,000 for an ambulance for Children’s at Scottish Rite Pediatric Hospital by physically spending a month on a billboard at Peachtree Battle shopping center.

Time on the billboard crystallized his decision to leave radio, he said, noting that he felt like “a charred remnant, dead as leftover snapper.”

So at age 54, he put down his microphone one last time and retired.

Over the next two-plus decades, he spent quality time with his children Case, Parker and Cassidy, played plenty of golf and helped his wife with her decorating and landscape design business. He rode a Harley and attended the annual Sturgis rally.

Credit: Rodney Ho

Credit: Rodney Ho

McKee faced a major tragedy in 2004: His oldest son Case died in a firearm accident as a teenager. “He sneaked a secured pistol to his room, was twirling it and it discharged,” McKee said. “Case, Parker and I hunted and shot many times and he knew better, but that doesn’t help, does it?”

For years, he would check the obituaries in the AJC and whenever he saw a kid around Case’s age, he’d send the parents a note so they‘d know they weren’t alone.

“Healing comes with a good family and I am the most blessed idiot on the field with Anita and our children,” he said in 2007.

In 2007, he was inducted into the Georgia Radio Hall of Fame.

At the ceremony, McKee admitted to being too self-centered early in his career but over time learned it was a team effort and worked hard to make sure everyone sounded good.

“I’m going to miss his quirkiness, his smile, his voice,” Cassidy said. “He had such a presence. He’d walk in a room and he’d laugh and everybody would turn around. He always wanted the best for us.”

McKee is survived by his children Parker and Cassidy and his now ex-wife Anita.