If you don't know Adam and Kelly (Foster) Shapiro's backstory, you might assume it's yet another romance started in the halls of WJPZ. Their story, as you'll hear here, is a much different road than than other Z89 couples.
Both members of the Class of 1992, they were certainly friendly in school, and had mutual friends, but didn't spend a ton of time together outside the station. Kelly joined the promotions department, eventually working her way up to legal director. Adam was a sports guy who became assistant sports director and a talk show host.
We've referenced the late SUNY-Oswego professor John Oldfield on the podcast before, but Kelly really explains what a thorn in WJPZ's side this man was. He was always trying to have a "gotcha" moment in the middle of Z89 renewing its FCC license. This adversary, and the myriad of folks who helped the station through license renewal, would end up teaching Kelly valuable career and life lessons before graduation. In fact, history would repeat itself, in a way. Nearly a decade later, when Kelly was President of the Alumni Association, she would have a hand in getting the station through its Receievership Era, as outlined by Harry and Dena in their episode.
In this podcast, you'll hear about the remarkable careers of this Z89 power couple - with Adam producing newscasts from Syracuse to Vegas to Miami to New York. Kelly started in radio but found her home on the agency side, working for many different firms, before ultimately being recruited to work for Rolex, where she's been since 2014.
But for as successful as Adam and Kelly have been, you'll hear more today about the WJPZ family then their long list of accomplishments. This includes the now-Shapiros reconnecting at the 2000 Banquet, and developing a deep and meaningful friendship that eventually turned into more - even if there were some hilarious speed bumps along the way, including a great airplane story with a WJPZ connection.
One of the benefits of marrying someone you went to school with is that their college friends are your college friends, and Adam and Kelly share that unique perspective.
John Oldfield Obituary: https://news.syr.edu/blog/2009/07/31/college-mourns-passing-of-professor-emeritus-john-oldfield/
The WJPZ at 50 Podcast Series is produced by Jon Gay, Class of 2002, and his podcast production agency, JAG in Detroit Podcasts.
Want to stay in the loop with WJPZ Alumni events? Subscribe to our newsletter on the right hand side of the page at http://wjpzalumni.org/
Jag: Welcome to WJPZ at 50. Hi, I'm Jon Jag Gay.. Throughout this podcast, we've heard many Syracuse love stories. We've heard about Sue Mandel and Rob Weingarten from the eighties. We have heard about Molly Nelson and Alex Brewer in the two thousands. We've even heard about Melody and Baymes lately from the 2020s.
So you would think today it's another Syracuse Z89 love story from the 1990s. From the class of 92, we have Kelly Foster and Adam Shapiro, but the story's a little bit different. But we'll put that on hold for a moment and get to that. We'll start at the beginning with both of you. First of all, welcome to the podcast.
Adam: Thank you, Jag. It's a pleasure to be here.
Kelly: Hey, Jag. Great to be here. Thanks for having us.
Jag: Excited to have you both. I know we've had to reschedule a couple of times on both sides, so I'm glad to finally have you both on. Kelly, let me start with you. Where did you grow up? How did you find out about Syracuse and then Z89?
Kelly: I grew up in Wayne, New Jersey. You've heard that before. There's a bunch of us from Wayne that have gone through WJPZ over the years. In high school, I was looking for a communication, I thought, Oh, I want to do communications. I hear you often on this podcast talk about everyone wanted broadcast journalism.
I was not, I didn't want broadcast journalism. I didn't want to be on TV, but I thought it seemed cool. The whole thing seemed cool. I don't think I knew what that meant, but I think that was what I wanted. So I went and looked at Syracuse, looked at some other schools too, but definitely. I had a beautiful, sunny, warm day on my tour of Syracuse.
Jag: Always. Always. That's how they get us.
Kelly: Not a day like that in four years of attending college, but it was beautiful when I toured the school. And I remember being on M Street after the tour and looking at my parents and saying, I want to go here.
Jag: How did you find JPZ or how did JPZ find you?
Kelly: I was one of those silly freshmen in college who decided to keep the boyfriend at home, which I did.
And so freshman year, I really didn't do much at all other than go to a couple of parties here and there. Sophomore year came back and I was single and I was like, I really want to do this Syracuse thing. I went to the club fair and there was a flyer for the radio station. And I went to the recruiting evening, afternoon, whatever it might've been.
And there stood, Hollywood Hal and the Henry Ferri and Scott Meach. And those guys stood up there and they were so mature and they were so well spoken and it just sounded like so much fun. And I immediately wanted to be part of the promotions team. So I started out in promotions and Henry Ferri was the promotions director at the time and did a whole bunch of things from there.
Jag: All right. Same set of questions for you, Adam.
Adam: I grew up on Long Island and I remember once visiting my grandparents in South Florida. And, believe it or not, I had Jewish grandparents in South Florida.
Jag: Oy vey.
Adam: I was reading an article in Sports Illustrated about the Newhouse School and the long lineage of great broadcasters that came from Syracuse.
Marty Glickman, you know the whole crew. And look, I wanted to be Bob Costas when I grew up.
Jag: Another one for the tote board. Hang on, I got a tote board here in the studio. Check one more off the list. Okay, go ahead.
Adam: That's exactly right. So I read that article. It was really the only place I wanted to go.
As my high school career evolved, let's just say I wasn't the most diligent person in the world, but thankfully they mailed me an application and I applied. I wound up actually getting into visual and performing arts, transferred within the university, never worked so hard academically as I did that first year to make sure I could get in and was, amazed by how many people around me, just how incredibly talented they were and obviously still are.
There were a lot of people who wanted to be Bob Costas and I was open to moving into radio, moving into television, news, sports, whatever it might be. I just love the concept of broadcasting and found a home at WJPZ.
Jag: How did you find the station?
Adam: I was interested upon arrival, but again, not the most diligent. So, while I went to the initial meeting, didn't wind up signing up or doing anything. Actually, my freshman year, wrote a couple of stories for the Daily Orange. But then sophomore year, I was on the same floor as Dana Dieterle, who was moving his way up in the news group and asked him about it, talked to him about it.
He suggested I come in. I did an aircheck and wound up doing news. Started off doing news. I remember having an air check with Brian Lapis, who in true Lippy style, well, did the, "my head is exploding. You have this sound!" And I was like, I love this place. Sweet Lippy Love. So wound up joining JPZ.
And really enjoyed just being there for three years. Wish it was four, but hindsight's 20 20.
Jag: I think Lippy told me the same thing. So you work your way up through news, anything else? What else did you do at the station, Adam?
Adam: I did news. I was never a jock, but I was the assistant sports director under Jen McClain my senior year.
And wound up hosting Sportsline 89 that year. At the time there was only one sports show. It was a call in show and co hosted it with Nate Andrasani most weeks. Loved doing that. And then most of my time was spent with the Crazy Morning Crew. Did the crew two days a week. This was my senior year.
Started off in the fall with Matthew Berry and Chris Lindsay. And then Matthew had to drop out at one point, and Kendall B. Armstrong. Kendall B. He took over for Matthew, we did the three of us, and just had a lot of fun. Acted like idiots, which is what the job is supposed to entail.
Jag: I have to give you a quick shout out here, Adam, because when I was interviewing Matthew Berry for the podcast, and he was trying to remember some details.
He was at one point furiously texting you to confirm some of the stories he was about to tell me, so thank you for the assist on that.
Adam: Usually we don't communicate those stories unless there is a court order of some sort. Without a subpoena, there just shouldn't be any tales told.
Jag: Kelly, back over to you. So you joined the station in promotions, and you had quite the run there after that as well.
Kelly: Yep, so I started in promotions. And then started doing traffic. It was, back in the day when traffic was putting it in a log, like literally writing out what had to happen during the day and what carts needed to be played and what sponsors needed to be promoted and played and that kind of thing.
So, I did that and then became the traffic director and my very, anal retentive organized self loved that. It was logs and charts and you had to follow it and it was all good.
Jag: I'm glad you mentioned the logs because for our younger listeners it may not be as familiar. This is not traffic "81 is backed up at Adams."
This is trafficking the spots that go on the logs, the sponsorships and the promos and everything else. Right?
Kelly: What carts to pull. That's right. Famous carts on the wall. Scotty MacFarlane still has one at home. His favorite one.
Jag: Do you know which one it is?
Kelly: I don't remember, but we could text him and find out and fill you in at the end.
Jag: I'll text Scotty while we're talking here.
Kelly: At the same time, like everyone else, I did my 2 to 4's and 4 to 6 shifts overnight,, and also had those air checks with Brian Lapis and Rocket Ross. And I do remember being told to sound less Jersey. You, you can't have a draw when you're on the air and a dog, you have to have a dog and a drawer, kind of like your Massachusetts issues.
We have some Jersey issues.
Jag: I have lots of Massachusetts issues.
Kelly: So anyways, after being assistant traffic director, I became a traffic director and then I became the promotions director. All the while through all of this going on, legal became more and more important because the station was being challenged. Our license was being challenged at the time, the license was being renewed.
And at the same time, we had somebody named John Oldfield, who has been mentioned a number of times in this podcast, who, was, challenging the license and wanted to hear his NPR station that he could have heard, but we were stepping on it, but it, he was in an area where he was supposed to get JPZ and not his NPR station, and he didn't understand that, nor did he care.
Jag: I'm going to break my own rule here and throw out an inside joke that roughly half of our listeners are going to get. I feel like, when you tell the story of Purim and they say Hayman's name and you have to yell and drown him out, I feel like that's what we need to do whenever John Oldfield comes up in the podcast.
Adam: Yes. Pass around the hamantaschen and we're talking Oldfield.
Kelly: The year he passed away, we toasted at the Banquet. Matt Friedman, a whole bunch of us, Matt Friedman, Jen Nycz Dave Gorab, Beth Gorab, and Scotty Meach. That year we were, I mean it's sad that poor man died, but we were so happy.
Jag: For the current students that he wouldn't be a thorn in our side anymore, he's part of the history of 50 years of WJPZ.
Kelly: He is, he is. For the people who don't know and don't understand what this all meant. Having a license challenge when you were a student run station was a big deal. And so, I became the assistant legal director and then eventually in my senior year, the legal director, and through all of that time, I was dealing with this.
And we had lawyers downtown that we were working with, and God love them. They were good to us from a pricing perspective, but we racked up quite the bill with them and they were trying to help us to fight this and legally to get the license back on. But all this time and when the license was being challenged, there was something called a legal file that was a plain old file cabinet in the radio station that had to have our license in it. And the person on air had to have a license, and that file that was in the radio station. Any person, and in this case it was usually John Oldfield, could come into that station at any hour of the day, and they could look for it, and they had to find those documents.
They had to be easily found, and that jock that was on air had to be licensed. And he challenged it many
Jag: times. I can't imagine this man is driving down from Oswego to walk into the radio station and demand to see the public file and just try to have a gotcha moment.
Kelly: At all hours. At all hours. And, we didn't have cell phones, so we didn't have, the text, hey, Legal director, get down to the station right now, this man is here.
I would go back to my dorm room, or my apartment, depending on what year it was, and I would get a message on my voicemail.
Jag: Your answering machine and the cassette.
Kelly: My recording device that sat next to my bed. That would say, you need to come down, he was here, and it would be, I mean, literally all hours of the day, so it was crazy, it was really an important time, we had to be really diligent about making sure that we had all our T's crossed and our I's dotted and that everything was in, in line and because we wanted to win, we wanted to get our license back and we were the little powerhouse that was beating 93Q and all of these great things, but this was a big piece.
You've heard a lot in all the stories from all the podcasts about all of the great promotions and giving away a car and all the money we were making and being able to give people commissions. Well, a lot of that was from this as well, because we had to pay the lawyers’ fees, right? And like I said, those lawyers charged us a fraction of what they could have charged us.
But they had to charge us something. And I remember putting on my interview suit, senior year, you have your suit for interviews for when you graduate, and I remember putting on my suit and going downtown, Kelly Sutton and I, and we had to go downtown and meet with these big lawyers and sign all this paperwork to make sure that they could go and fight this in court and get our license back.
And it took a long time. I mean, I graduated, we didn't have a license. It took a couple of years. I think it was the following year that it came back. I'd have to look back at actual dates of when it finally happened, but it was a pretty amazing time. And I think one of those things that what I learned from it, I learned a lot about business and about relationships and context and having these conversations and really having these very adult conversations.
Jag: That would be 2024 Hall of Fame inductee, Kelly Sutton, our first female general manager that you just referenced, so I wanted to make sure I get that in.
Kelly: That's right.
Jag: I'm glad you told the Oldfield story in a little bit more detail because we haven't had that on the podcast yet. A lot of times it's a side comment of aw, guy that tried to ruin us. And thank you to Matt Friedman for filling in some of the details here.
This was a Syracuse Universtity professor who loved the National Public Radio station from Oswego. And because he lived so close to OUR transmitter on top of Day Hall, he wasn't able to get the NPR affiliate out of Oswego. And he made it his mission to take us out and not let us renew our license. So for the other half of our audience, he tried to be the Grinch who stole Christmas.
Kelly: Yes, he did. He really, really did.
Jag: Scotty MacFarlane just texted back. He has several carts. September by Earth, Wind, and Fire, Rock With You by Michael Jackson, Come and Talk to Me by Jodeci, and Don't Take It Personal by Monica.
Adam: That's a great
Kelly: collection. September is the one I was thinking of, Earth, Wind, and Fire, because he has shown that many times. He actually sometimes has it in his Hall of Fame pocket at the banquet.
Adam: I just want to know where En Vogue is located, that's all.
Jag: You don't want to know which pocket that one's in.
Kelly: No, Velardi has that one.
Jag: We've covered that in the podcast as well. So one of the questions I always ask in the podcast, as you both know, is lessons you've learned from your experience at JPZ.
I want to get into your career, Kelly, and what you've done since JPZ, because you've done so much, but also how the lessons of this trying time really kind of benefited you as you went through adulthood, let's say.
Kelly: There were two things that I took away from it. The first was how important connections are, and the reason for that is we were using the RAB, I think it was, this network of radio stations and these people who are trying to help us, and we were using anyone we could to help us to figure out how to get past this issue with the license, and in doing so, I met a man who was running, I think it was the, either the RAB or the NAB, I don't remember and I met a man and he had a radio station in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and he was super helpful to us on, kind of this path to renewal.
And guidance and what we could do, but he ended up giving me a job. So my first job out of college, after having many conversations with this man, he said to me, “When you're home for spring break, come see me.”
And I went to see him and he said, “Come see me when you graduate.” And by the time I graduated, I had a job in promotions at a radio station in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
Working with this guy. That was the first, lesson of, what you do with yourself and how professional you are in all conversations, no matter what you're doing, what can come out of that. And then the second is similar to that, and that's that it was really how to be in business, how to present yourself, how to sit in a huge conference room and behave and how to sit up and how to manage your yourself.
I don't, I don't think I ever thought I would be a good business person, but it taught you how to do that. It taught you how to kind of turn it on.
Jag: None of us knew how to do any of that as 17, 18-year-old kids getting to the radio station. No. And then I think it's such a gift that we had this experience at this organization that it taught us how to grow up.
Some of it was trial by fire, like you just mentioned with Oldfield. Everybody kind of had their own path, but it's true for all of us. I think it gave us a leg up on a lot of other folks our age. And that taught us kind of how to be a grownup before we graduated college, which was a huge leg up. You get the promotions job in New Jersey and tell me where things go from there.
Kelly: So, the job turned out to be terrible. I was hired to do promotions and the assistant general manager didn't like me because I was the young blonde college graduate who the man who owned the station hired without consulting her. So she immediately took offense to that. So it became a difficult job.
I enjoyed my work. I enjoyed what I was doing. I was doing promotions and I was doing sales and it was really enjoyable, but I also learned in that situation that it's not necessarily what you're doing every day. It's also the people that you surround yourself with. And my boss there was really pretty dreadful.
I had a very supportive father, fortunately, who said quit your job and figure it out, so I did. And I used the Newhouse Network. I had interned at WSYR and I had interned at Y94 and worked at WSYR in college. Yeah. So I knew Lynn Vanderhoek quite well and reached out to her and she helped connect me via the Syracuse network to someone who is not from WJPZ, but is a Syracuse alum who got me my first job at Young and Rubicam in New York.
I had loved advertising. I had taken the advertising class in Newhouse and had enjoyed every moment of it. And so, this really seemed like a great job. And so I started in media research at Young and Rubicam on Madison Avenue in New York City and been a great ride since then because I loved it from the day I got in there.
I moved into media planning and did that and at Y&R for a number of years and then I left and went to J. Walter Thompson and then from there the media and advertising world has done lots and lots of consolidations. So for a number of years I worked at the same job and had lots of different business cards.
The main one was Mindshare, rose in the ranks there and was there from when I went to J. Walter Thompson, which became Mindshare in 2000. It was there until. I left in 2014 to go to Rolex. In the year 2000, I had moved to J. Walter Thompson to work on some dot com businesses, which I quickly found I didn't like because they really didn't know what they were doing and they weren't strategic and they didn't have a vision.
They just had an enormous amount of money.
Jag: Almost like a bubble, you might say, at that time.
Kelly: There was a bubble. So when the person who was running the Rolex business left, I raised my hand and said, that is a business that I want to work on. That's a real brand with a consumer and a history and a heritage and a story to tell.
So I was put on that business and then I kind of kept it and worked on many different things from American Express to pharmaceuticals. I worked on Estee Lauder and Revlon. So I've worked on all categories throughout my years, in the agencies, but I always kept Rolex with me and was fortunate enough to get recruited to go over to the client in 2014.
And now I am the Director of Advertising for the United States and the Caribbean for Rolex Watch USA.
Jag: It's quite a run and we could probably spend hours on the career and the amazing things you've done, Kelly, but let me bounce it back over to Adam. Walk me through your journey from Syracuse to now. I know you've had a lot of different things you've been involved with.
Adam: I had a lot of different mailing addresses and different gigs through the years. Matt Friedman by the way, I think I'm contractually obligated to mention Matt Friedman on this podcast. So I'm now done with that responsibility.
Jag: I'll do it for you. Anybody that graduated around that time or overlaps with Friedman, he's always my source of show prep.
So I did consult him before getting you both on today.
Adam: Okay, well done.
Kelly: Oh boy.
Adam: From the time I graduated in 92 to 2004, I had 13 different mailing addresses. It was quite a journey. Started off in radio in lovely upstate Utica, New York, working the 4am, the morning drive shift is never easy anywhere, but particularly during the winter in Utica, New York. Before the plows come out, you got to be at the office.
So I spent quite a few mornings with a shovel in my hand at 3am. That was a real treat. But loved the job, learned a ton, learned how to write. And then I remember speaking with someone about a really good job in Detroit. And the $13, 000 I was making in Utica, I said, all right, well, now it's Detroit.
Like this is where the money starts. And that was for $17, 000. And I was like, you know what? Maybe this isn't the lucrative field that I thought it was.
Jag: 33 percent raise
Adam: Started looking at television and applied to WSTM for a reporter job. And the news director there thought highly of me. And he said, look, I have a mountain of tapes here and I have a lot of reporters to choose from, but I have two resumes of producers.
Do you think you could be our 11 o'clock producer? And thought about it and decided, yes, that would be a great idea. Worked with Matt Mulcahy and Jackie Robinson and Wayne Mahar at WSTM. Loved it. Really had a great experience there. And then Matt, one day he knew I was a big fan of Vegas. He showed me a job opening at KVBC in Las Vegas. And said, you should apply there.
And I was like, all right, well, I'll take a chance. So I sent in a tape, sent in a resume, wound up getting hired to be the 5 o'clock producer there. And lived in Vegas for a year and a half as a 25 year old. Oh my god. Just for those who are listening, yeah, Vegas is a really good place to be 25 and young and stupid and single.
Had a great time there. Didn't have to leave in the middle of the night with somebody coming after me looking for my wallet. But really enjoyed Vegas and wound up working as the 6 o'clock producer at the NBC affiliate in Phoenix. Lived there for two years. Went to Miami was the, I think, executive producer or senior producer of the WSVN morning show.
That wasn't really a great mix of styles. I was a producer who thought in terms of delivering news value. And look, that was the station where the phrase, "it bleeds it leads" started. They do what they do exceptionally well. I so admire and admired what they do and what they did. It just wasn't for me.
And I wasn't overly healthy at the time. Wound up coming home to Long Island and then took over as news director for. News 12's very hyper local initiative that was going to be going under very soon. They kind of asked me to be the news director until they can put it to bed. They thought it would take two weeks. It wound up taking six months.
And in that time, I said, look, if this is not going to happen so quickly, could I look at the resources we have and try to make better television of it? And this is where a lot of the Newhouse and JPZ education came in and we made actually pretty good television to the point where I didn't realize this was Chuck Dolan.
Chuck, the founder of Cablevision, the guy who founded HBO. I mean, a true legend in the industry. He came into the office one day. I didn't know Neighborhood News was his brainchild, his baby. Okay. And he came in and he shook my hand. He said, Adam, I didn't think that this channel would ever look this good.
Jag: Wow.
Adam: And I was immensely proud of that. He mentioned it to Pat Dolan, who was a head of all the News 12 networks. And Pat then hired me to be the first news director of News 12 Interactive. And that was my foray into digital. The reason I tell that story is because with News12 Interactive, a very big JPZ lesson came through, which is being better than the sum of your parts.
So JPZ, look, we didn't crack the code on a new format that nobody else could do. We didn't do sports and nobody else did sports, we didn't do news nobody else did. But we had a phenomenally engaged, really excited and creative group of people making magic. And when we were with News 12, we hired a lot of people who were not coming from the major journalism factories to create really good, compelling digital content.
And we actually won the National Edward R. Murrow Award one year, which I still think is one of the most proud moments of my career because we were much greater than the sum of our parts. I'm very proud of that. And then wound up doing more digital with WCBS. I was the managing editor of WCBSTV. com. And then later was the executive editor of WNBC. com.
And yes, the Howard Stern line can come in there. W N B C. It's just hard to resist. Had great experiences there, but look along the road had plenty of ziggies, some ups, some downs, but started getting into digital. And then from there wound up on the entrepreneurial side, worked for image recognition technology, founded my own startup at one point, which he gave us a lot of sleepless nights here in the Shapiro household.
But have learned to innovate and to look at technology and to figure out how can we best use technology to accomplish goals, to make people smarter, maybe make a little money. And now that's the world I'm in.
Jag: And you had actually asked me to look at a service you're doing for a text message service for podcast listeners recently.
And you came to me and adopted Michigan fan with the example of Ohio State, which was, something I'm never going to let you live down.
Go blue.
Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. So you mentioned the names, there's so many names that are connected with you guys and so many people. I'm gonna bring it back to Scotty MacFarlane for a second, cause he was with the first interview that I did for this podcast chronologically, and this is actually gonna be one of the final ones before I start to wind it down.
I'm gonna read you a text that he followed up with a minute ago. "When push came to shove, I had to decide between going to CBS News or take a new role with NBC News two years ago. Adam Shapiro was my guide, my sounding board, my advisor. Such a cool thing to have teammates like we do."
Adam: He's just, he's so massively generous.
I would argue overly so. But look, that's one of the common threads with JPZ is We are surrounded by immensely talented people and really good people, the kind of people you want to root for, you want to work with, and Scott is just an example of the kind of folks that we'll see around a table at Varsity in March because we all love it so much.
Jag: And it's like he said, my favorite line maybe from the whole podcast was when he said, you're my friend from school. You guys were class of 92, he was class of 98. That doesn't matter. We're all just one big family. And speaking of the family, come back for the banquet every year. And, we kind of danced around this earlier, those who don't know you, in addition to the tremendous resumes that you both have, which you're both pretty humble about, and I didn't know some of the things until talking to you just now.
You didn't get together in school. You were classmates. First off, what kind of interaction did you have in school with each other? And then how does Banquet play into your story?
Kelly: We obviously knew each other at the station. I mean, I was friends with Kendall B. We had a lot of the same friends. We were there at the same time.
We were hanging out together. I was an executive staff member. He was a senior staff member. So we were, we knew each other, obviously. But Adam's always said, but we didn't have each other's telephone numbers when we graduated.
Jag: That's a problem back then.
Adam: At the time, that was the measuring stick. Yeah. That was the only measuring stick.
Kelly: Yeah. And then, as he has talked about, he traveled all over the country. And I was in New York and I would go back for the banquet each year. I was the VP of the Alumni Association and then the president of the Alumni Association. When the station went into receivership, so I had that big moment in my life as well, was you know the guide for Dena as she was the GM dealing with some pretty big issues at the station that she went into on her podcast, I helped to put together what became the receivership committee and the Oversight for the station to help get it through that rough time. And it did you know, entail including the university and again, I mentioned Lynn Vanderhoek again, because she is a good friend and was a huge help then as well in helping us to show the university who wanted nothing to do with this issue that was going on at the station, which had to do with race.
The university wanted nothing to do with it. And she helped to show them the value of what WJPZ provides these students. And the value of this being another challenge for these kids to work through. And, this is just one more reason why this is the greatest classroom on earth. Because it was one more hurdle.
And it was a different hurdle than what music to play tomorrow. But it was another hurdle that a station full of, 18, 19, 20 year olds had to manage through. So as president of the Alumni Association then. I was very much involved in getting the station through that and that took a couple years.
And then when that was done, I was really tired. I took a year or two off from coming back and then came back in the year 2000 just as a member of the alumni association and not with any role or responsibility, which was lovely. And this guy named Adam Shapiro came back for the first time in 10 years, eight years, 10 years.
And we had a lot of laughs that weekend, and we had a lot of fun. There were a big group of us that year, and just spent a lot of time that, together that weekend. Ended up singing karaoke at whatever the name of the bar in the Sheraton was at the time. It changes every year. And just had a lot of laughs, and then I think we were on the same plane home the next day, right? To New York.
Adam: We were, yeah.
Kelly: Coincidentally, we were on the same plane on the way home. So we were laughing in the airport that all of a sudden, we were traveling together. And what did that mean?
Jag: Ha! A little foreshadowing there.
Kelly: I know, right? We had a lot of laughs, and then we started hanging out, but we didn't get together for another two, three years.
Jag: Adam, go ahead.
Adam: No, look, we should have known what destiny had in for us when we sang Grease's "You're the One That I Want" at karaoke. It couldn't have been more obvious. But yeah, I mean, I, look, I went back and, I was a young single idiot, and there was this, beautiful, smart, funny woman with apparently generously low standards of who she hangs out with, and we had a blast.
We had a really good time. No matter what the circumstance, whether we were dating or not, we always had fun together. We always laughed together. We weren't together at on that wonderful night in April of 2003 when Carmelo Anthony and Gerry McNamara raised the championship. But I went out to a bar afterward with some folks in New York City and Kelly was there and I remember being so happy she was there.
And in terms of the idiocy stuff in life, it was one of the greatest nights of my life and she was there for it. In the real life, important things, stuff in life, like having children, getting married, all the stuff that really matters. She's always been there too. And I don't think that should be a surprise.
She's, she's terrific. She's, she's a hall of famer. And pretty terrific, even when she's not wearing that orange jacket.
Jag: Kelly, I'll give you the chance to reciprocate here.
Kelly: I don't know if I can, he's always the mushy one. I mean, he became my best friend, like he said, we had this time when we weren't together, but we were talking all the time.
We were good friends. We'd go out to dinner. He became my best friend. And that, is the best part, right? And that's the foundation that I think makes it, all work. We had a little bit of a road, but once we knew, we knew. Yeah. And it took us a little while to figure that out. Maybe we're not the brightest people in the world, but once we knew, we knew.
Adam: I was 35 when we got married. We were not spring chickens, but when we got there, we knew that it was the right thing. The Billy Joel song, "You're My Home" was our wedding song. Cause we realized we kind of finally figured it out.
Kelly: Yeah. Matt Friedman stood up at our rehearsal dinner and toasted us and said, I knew what I saw you've gotten singing karaoke at the banquet and we were like, no, he didn't. But it was pretty funny.
Jag: It's funny you mentioned getting married at 35. I got married at 36 and Adam, you and I haven't spent a lot of time together, but at a barbecue at Friedman's prior to a JPZ golf trip that a bunch of y'all were going on. I remember I picked up you and Velardi at the airport and we had a great conversation in the car on the way to Freedman's house about being a little bit more sure of who you are, and when you're getting married in your mid-30s, as opposed to getting married at 21, 22, and the benefits of that. It certainly works, for some folks who get married young, get married old, whatever, but the fact that you had figured out who you were as individuals, and then you came together, and now, two kids, right?
Kelly: Yep. Two kids, and a dog, as you've
Jag: heard. Well, but hopefully the listeners haven't if I edited this well.
Kelly: Yeah. I think you're absolutely right, Jag. I think, I know that I was not capable of a real relationship when, in my twenties.
Jag: Ditto.
Kelly: We got together when it was right for the two of us, when we both were mature enough to do it the right way.
And marriage is not easy. It's not easy on anyone. It's, it's got, it's ups and downs. But,hopefully if you have the right person, and we do. It makes you be able to work through those things and it makes it a lot of fun.
Adam: I'm just psyched that she used the word mature with me in it. That's pretty cool.
Kelly: Yeah, I have an 11 year old son and Adam likes to be his age sometimes.
Adam: Look, the key is, and here's relationship advice. Might want to subscribe to my newsletter.
Jag: You should have a podcast.
Adam: Yeah now look, we obviously, we have fun. We laugh the whole thing, but we also have a very consistent approach to life in general, treat people well, do the right thing, work hard. Parenting is not easy for anybody, but we have a very consistent message to the kids. Do it right. And that's part of what we have gotten out of JPZ, is this is an organization of folks that like to do it right.
And it's why we listen every Monday morning when a new podcast drops, is because you love to smile and say, I'm part of that club.
Jag: That is very well put. What's interesting is, for so many of us that met our spouses outside Syracuse, outside Z89, it's a big moment when you bring a plus one to the banquet, because you are subjecting them to the whole insanity of this huge family that we all share, and some of them say, hey, I know this is important to you, I was happy to come, but you know what?
Go yourself and enjoy your time with your college friends. And some say, wow, what a fun group, I'll come back, and there are some that are in the middle. But the interesting thing for the two of you is, and Friedman alluded this to me in a text earlier. Your social circle is really tied together because your friends from school are your friends from school for both of you.
Kelly: Yeah, when we were not dating, we were both invited to Kendall B's wedding. So we were both friends with Kendall B from college. We flew out to California for Kendall and Alice's wedding on the same flight. And again, we had a blast with all of the people that you are at with a wedding with, all these people that we went to college with.
We really had a lot of the same friends, like we ran in the same circle, a few here and there that were different, but like, for the most part, we had the same friends, right? It's funny how that happens. And yet we really didn't hang out in college, and then we, we didn't hang out as much after college because Adam was, chasing the dream, moving to all these different cities all over the country, whereas I was in New York and, hanging out with a lot of the Syracuse people in New York, Bette Kestin and, Steve Donovan told you all about, all the comedy nights and, we had a blast going to see him do his comedy.
When we were 26, 27 years old, your friend is on stage at like some club downtown that you can barely find, but it was a blast. And, I think Jeanne talked about it too, and we had a lot of fun. And I think, then there were like, Adam wasn't really friends with Steve Donovan, but I was because Bette and I had grown up together.
Our dads worked together. It all kind of comes back around, and I think having the foundation that we both have makes it easy for us as a couple, but then it's also nice to have those, 10-ish years where we did our own thing and we have other friends and other experiences and other things to talk about.
Jag: Adam?
Adam: Jag, I do want to point out that on that trip to Kendall's wedding, for all of the people who first knew Kelly as, and she'll smile when I say, "the legal bitch." So, like a lot of couples, we dated for a little while, and then we had a relatively short breakup period, and then we got back together. And the wedding was during the breakup period.
Jag: Oh! That's an important detail that Kelly left out!
Adam: We were flying to L. A. And we get into the plane and I was thinking to myself, boy, I was pretty sure we were sitting close to each other. She requested a seat change.
Kelly: I got upgraded.
Adam: You got upgraded. Yeah. So she didn't hang out with the riffraff.
Jag: So you got upgraded to avoid sitting near Adam?
Kelly: Yeah.
Jag: Wow!
Adam: She did.
Jag: Okay,
Kelly: I wasn't sure what I was gonna say to him for four hours, five hours to LA.
Adam: Yeah, you know what? I'm not sure I can carry a conversation for more than two anyway.
Kelly: But I also had the leg room. I got upgraded I had my leg room
Jag: It's all about the leg room. Sure!
Adam: If anybody needs leg room, it's Kelly.
Kelly: Who doesn't need leg room when you're five two?
Adam: So yes, she can play hardball, but she's alright. I don't take back any of the nice things earlier.
Kelly: I made him work for it
Jag: As any smart woman would do, yeah, for sure.
Kelly: Right!
Adam: I remember when my mom turned to me and said, “You do mean it this time, right? Like, I mean, this is the real thing. Kelly's too special to not be fully committed.” And I was like, Yes, yes, yes. Now I needed my family nagging me about her.
Jag: Always listen to mom. Mom always knows. That's the way it goes. We've covered a lot of ground today, Adam and Kelly. I don't want to be remiss and not ask you about funny stories you have from the station. And this could be its own separate podcast, knowing how plugged into the Alumni Association and friends to this day, 30 years later, you both still have. But give me, if you would, a funny story or two from your time at Z89.
Adam: Well, being part of the Crazy Morning Crew was just a blast. And I mentioned before, working with Matthew Berry and Chris Lindsey and Kendall. And there was one stretch of time where the American Gladiators were coming to Syracuse.
You may have seen the documentary recently, or you may remember the show, but it's a lot of, overly inflated human beings beating the living daylights out of other folks as a reality show competition type thing. They were promoting it by saying, we're going to be doing American Gladiator tryouts.
Now, obviously, you guys have seen me in person, you know that I'm a natural for this kind of thing. And we started making a bit that Adam was going to be trying out for the American Gladiators. I did, I took a Z 89 t shirt, I cut off the sleeves, I tried to make it look as Hulk Hogan as possible. But Shappamania wasn't running wild.
They did not take me for the American Gladiator. But I did go down there and I started going through the tryout routine. I was eliminated fairly quickly. But my American Gladiator name was Torso. And Torso did not make the cut.
Jag: Were you filing live reports, giving them updates? How far did the bit go?
Adam: I was. I did a couple of call ins. We had a good time. Look, we were all idiots, and the whole desire to do something funny and weird and, just kind of try stuff is what makes what makes JPZ great.
Jag: Well said. Kelly, any stories that stick out to you, funny or otherwise?
Kelly: I don't have a lot of funny stories from the station because I was the legal bitch, as you heard.
Jag: I tried to keep it broad. I said funny or otherwise. Just memories or moments you stick out in your memory from your time as a student.
Kelly: Do you know what sticks out in my memory most is, it's a little bit about the physicalness of the station. Like it was, when we were there, it was so narrow and small.
You'd walk in. This tiny little hallway and the production room was on the left and the studio was on the right. And then you'd go straight back in the office. I mean, tiny, right? Like it was teeny tiny. And I just remember the personalities and the, like, you felt so at home there and so comfortable and so happy.
Because, I'd be there, and like, in would walk BB good, and you could hear her coming a mile away. She was just so happy, all the time, and like, it just warms your heart. And Goofy Bette would follow behind, and like, just make everybody laugh. And, he just, this series of people, I mean, Lippy, I mean, God, sweet Lippy love, he was everywhere.
And then, Donovan went later on, and to me, that's the part that I remember the most, the warmth, and Beth Russell at the time, and I remember being in the production studio with her one time, we were trying to voice over something, but we just, we couldn't do it, we were laughing so hard, like, every time we'd try to do it, we'd start laughing, and like, you just couldn't get through it.
It's like little moments like that. And I think that's the warmth of the station and the warmth of the friendships that we've made and the relationships that we have because of it that just make you feel good. And, everybody makes you laugh. And it's a good laugh. It's a good, comfortable, fun, happy laugh.
Jag: That, I think, is the perfect place to leave it with just that overall feeling of the station, whether you graduated in 76 or 23. It really has that je ne sais quoi about it. And I want to thank you both for coming on the podcast. Knowing the larger group of alumni of the station, and it really has been a privilege to get to know so many through 110 plus episodes of this podcast. This series would not have been complete without the two of you and your story So I want to thank you both for coming on and sharing your story. You both had incredible careers, but we didn't spend much time on it because you're both pretty modest about just all these amazing things that you've done because you want to talk about the radio station and the connections and the people.
And I think that says just as much about you as it does the people we've talked about today. So thank you both for coming on today.
Kelly: Thank you.
Adam: Jag you're the best. This has been an amazing series. We're thrilled to be just 1/110th of it. We're very happy.
Kelly: Yeah. No, thank you so much for having us. And I listened to all of them. I haven't listened to all of them. There's too many. But I think what you've done is Tremendous. It's a tremendous history.
Jag: Thank you.
Kelly: Scott Meach and I laugh because we both have, like, piles of things from the Alumni Association years, early years, in our basements, like, just paperwork that we don't know what to do with, but this really puts the history together in a way that we never really figured out how to do before, and so, kudos to you for that.
Jag: That, that means a lot. I really appreciate it.
Thank you.
Adam: Jag, your wings are ready.