Kelly Sutton, '92, is the first female general manager in the history of WJPZ. And, like many of us, the station launched her into a prolific media career.
This Buffalo native went to Syracuse, in part, because of the opportunity to double major in both Newhouse and business. And when a local radio owner back home promised a summer job, she knew she needed experience. By the spring, she found Z89, and folks like Scott Meach, Hal Rood, Dave Gorab, Dave Roberts, Dave Morgan, and more.
Despite doing an overnight shift, she knew she wanted to work off-air, and she worked her way up to promotions director, and also doing sales (there was a commission structure in place at the time). Kelly was encouraged to run for General Manager, which she did, and won. While she didn't see it as a big deal at the time, she's certainly proud of the legacy of strong female leaders at the station since.
After Syracuse, Kelly returned home to Buffalo where she worked in various sales and management roles. Soon, she got her "major market" opportunity to head east to Boston. She relied on the advice of some lifelong JPZ friends to make the move, and the first person she met at CBS Boston also had JPZ roots. The conversation starter of "where did you go to school" was the beginning of a lifelong friendship with Julie Bruno.
After a succesful run at Boston's rock station WBCN, she was recruited to head over to then-Entercom, and sports station WEEI. We spend some time on what the sales side of sports radio looks like. Do wins and losses matter? What happens when a personality crosses the line? Or an advertiser THINKS they did, but got bad information?
The radio industry is tough, and Kelly prefers to be in the sales side over the management side - through COVID, corporate mergers. and more. (The Entercom/CBS merger in Boston was so complicated, the DOJ took Kelly's laptop at one point!) We talk about what it takes to be successful today in radio, from both an an on and off-air perspective.
We close the conversation by getting very personal. Kelly has a special needs son, Devin. When she moved to Boston she was a single Mom, and certainly had a lot on her plate. That first encounter with Julie Bruno resulted in a piece of advice from Julie that Kelly says changed her life. It's one of our favoirite JPZ'er-helping-JPZ'er stories yet. You'll hear about that today, as well as the inspirational young man Devin is, as well as Kelly's other son, Brady.
The WJPZ at 50 Podcast Series is produced by Jon Gay, Class of 2002, and his podcast production agency, JAG in Detroit Podcasts.
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Jag: Welcome to WJPZ at 50. I am Jon Jag Gay. I am so excited to have today’s guest on. She is the first female general manager in WJPZ history. She is currently at WEEI in Boston. So in Boston terms, she has been there for six Super Bowls, four World Series, one Stanley Cup, and one NBA Championship. Kelly Sutton, welcome to the podcast.
Kelly: Thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to finally be speaking with you, and thank you for doing all of these. It’s really been fun to listen to them.
Jag: Thank you so much. It’s been even more fun doing them and how much I’ve gotten out of them. I’ll start at the beginning with you, like we do always. You’ve been in Boston forever, but you’re not from Boston, right? Originally?
Kelly: Correct. I’m from Buffalo originally.
Jag: Tell me how you found out about Syracuse, being down the road there on I-90 and what brought you there and then how you found the radio station.
Kelly: Yeah, so when I was in high school, I decided I wanted to have a career where I could make some money. And so I heard that accountants made money and people in advertising made money. And so I actually wanted to go away to school but still be close enough, because at the time, you know, you have a boyfriend in high school and you think you’re never going to break up. So, yes, we did break up, but I ended up applying to schools primarily in New York State and found Syracuse.
Kelly: And as we all know, had we toured Syracuse in the winter, we probably would not have gone. But I heard there was Newhouse, but I could have a dual major in business and in the Newhouse school. So that’s how I decided to go there. And I was fortunate that this family that I babysat for, he was a great mentor to me. He’s like a second dad. I’m still very close to them. And the company he worked for on radio stations at Buffalo and carried Buffalo Sabres, Buffalo Bills, Buffalo Bisons.
Kelly: And he said, hey, when you come home this summer, I’ll help you get an internship at the radio stations. And he was so good to me. I was like, well, I don’t want to embarrass him and not know anything. So I found Z89. I think it was in the Schine Student Center. They had a table set up, and I went to the first meeting, and there was Scott Meach doing the recruitment meeting. And I joined the spring semester my freshman year.
Kelly: And so that’s how it all started.
Jag: So you get to the radio station and “wanting to look good for my future internship” might be a first for “Why I found Z89” in this podcast. So we broke a new ground here. Kelly. When you got to the station, tell me what you got involved with, and some of the things you did there, because you weren’t one of those I want to get on the mic. You had other aspirations, as you mentioned a minute ago.
Kelly: Yes. So I don’t know if it’s still true today, but everyone had to do on air shifts.
Jag: Okay.
Kelly: And Scott Meach did all of the training so you could get your radio license so you could do on air. So I did the 02:00 A.M. To 04:00 A.M., and I was terrible, and I left my mic open. I said, “Oh shit,” over the air. And then some random weirdo calls up in the middle of night, and he’s like, “Oh, I heard it. Don’t worry about it.” And so I knew at that point that on air was not for me. And then I went over to the business side and started doing promotions.
Kelly: And that’s how I ended up going through promotions and then the sales side and worked with, like, Ken and Henry and Hal and the Daves. Dave Morgan, Dave Gorab, Dave Roberts, and a whole bunch of wonderful people. Kelly Foster. Yes, many that we get to see today.
Jag: So you’re there, spring of 89, if my math is right, when you get to the radio station, you go from on air to promotions. A lot going on at that period of time.
Kelly: Right?
Jag: I don’t want to say trial by fire, but there was a lot happening at the station at that time in its history.
Kelly: Yes, absolutely. There was a lot of really interesting things happening from a business perspective. Henry, when he was the GM, was making a lot of really, at that time, innovative changes on the business side of things by introducing, like, a commission plan. We did our first car giveaway at the New York State Fair, which was unheard of, of a college station and of course, the ongoing competition with 93Q.
Kelly: So, yeah, those are some of the things. It’s been a long time. So if there’s other things that were going on that you’re thinking of, definitely share them with me.
Jag: That’s kind of the gist of it. I always think of the car at the State Fair, and then you mentioned the sponsorship, and things are humming along at that time. What made you decide you wanted to start climbing the ranks at the station?
Kelly: I don’t know that I decided so much as I was encouraged to.
Jag: You’re not alone in that, by the way. Throughout the history of the radio station.
Kelly: I just really got so much out of it. I learned so much. And I remember Rocco, when he was at Hot 97 saying, this is not that different from the real-life radio stations. He was working at Hot 97. So I was encouraged to apply. And I would say that Henry really pushed me along in that direction, too, as well as some other folks as well. And it was really an interesting experience, but it didn’t even occur to me about being the first female general manager. And it wasn’t so much awareness around the difference, gender differences, because at that point in our station’s history and culturally at that time, it just wasn’t part of the Z culture at all.
Kelly: And certainly everyone got paid the same because you either were volunteer or you could sell and make commission. But yeah. So, no, I’m grateful for the encouragement and the push and the shove to apply for the role.
Jag: Any roles you had prior to being GM, any management roles on the executive staff before that, or would you kind of just kind of work your way up to GM from sales?
Kelly: I was the promotions director too. And that was certainly a great experience as well. Because when you’re feet on the ground and you’re setting up the remotes and you’re doing everything from soup to nuts, you’re meeting with sponsors and executing promotions and then making sure the sponsorships are written correctly. You do get to learn so much when you’re there. And it is truly a fantastic learning experience unlike anything else since I left school.
Jag: It is interesting. I was a little surprised, to be honest, when you said that gender wasn’t so much a factor when you took that role, because I think in the history of the station and throughout this podcast, we’ve tried to be as inclusive as possible and bring in as many folks as we can. And there’s a long line of amazing, incredible women that led the radio station as we look into the more recent years. And you were the first, and I think we have a lot of folks in the Hall of Fame that are white male dominated. I’ll just say it. But I feel like a part of that is the station, in the first 25 years of its history, was white male dominated in terms of a staff. Would you agree, disagree with that?
Kelly: No, I would agree with that. I don’t know the exact statistics, and I think I just didn’t really notice it because you had other female friends that were part of the radio station too. And I would certainly say, looking back on it now, you notice it more because the awareness is there. But I think there have been certainly many female GMs since, which is always great to see. And the importance of diversity is just so critical. And now that we know better, we can do better.
Kelly: And I think that’s just fantastic. And it just starts with one person embracing you and saying, hey, why don’t you try it out?
Jag: I’m really glad to hear you say that. Totally agree with you. As we embrace as much diversity and inclusion as we can going forward.
I want to come to your career in a second because you’ve had an amazing career since Syracuse. But are there specific things you remember learning in your time at the station that have served you well in the career you’ve had?
0Kelly: You know, people are always willing to help you. And the support that we had being students like even that car dealership, Carbone Pontiac Nissan, when we walked into sponsors and even the business community, even people at New City Communications, which was Y94. The amount of support that people are willing to give students and to mentor them and to guide them, people really do want to make a difference. And since people did that for me, I’ve tried to pay it forward since. So, for example, that family that supported me in finding my internship, I started an internship on the sales side at our company because it didn’t exist. It only existed in promotions. It didn’t exist on the sales side, right?
Kelly: And I’m like, there are so many opportunities for selling and students in college, there weren’t a whole lot of classes. I remember taking one sales class at Syracuse and the guy’s like, “Save your receipts for your taxes so you can write everything off.” That’s what stood out to me. So I think people asking for help, I think the importance of those internships is just really critical. So paying that forward within our own organizations, whether you’re still in media or you’re not, and bringing people along and then sometimes I need a little shove or a push to keep growing. And when I changed from CBS. When I moved from Buffalo to Boston, that was a huge deal for me.
Kelly: But sometimes you got to go to grow. And so I think that’s one of the things that I’ve learned, too. But really the support that I had when I was there continues from people from Z89 to this day.
Jag: Who are you still in touch with from Z89 now?
Kelly: Oh, it’s a great list. It’s a great list. So definitely Ken and Henry. Hal, I just saw him over the summer at the Falmouth Road Race. We ran into each other. Certainly I ran into like Dave Morgan, Heather Thompson. Scott I ran into, but Ken Scott and I actually have been working on a campaign together for one of my big clients for the company that he works for. And Julie Bruno I met on my very first day working at WBCN. And being from Buffalo, we are a hardcore group, both working folks and me, Ken and Henry all worked together in Buffalo too, which was such a great experience.
Kelly: Bill Sauer was our GM, who is a Syracuse Alum. Not a Z89 Alum, but a Syracuse Alum who gave me my very first real job, if you will. But Julie is an amazing lifelong friend. I showed up to work my very first day at BCN. No one was there, so I was early. It was probably like, I don’t know, it was only 08:00. Like in Buffalo, people showed up at 7:30 in the morning to start the day, and she’s like, so the manager is calling somebody because she was coming from a different town, and she was stuck in traffic because, of course, this is Boston, not Buffalo. There’s a lot more traffic.
Kelly: So Julie gets there, she lets me in. She’s the very first person that I meet on my very first day, and we start talking. Where are you from? Where did you go to school? Blah, blah. Syracuse. Syracuse. I worked at a college station. Me too. What was it? So from there, it was just, like, instant.
Jag: And I have to give Julie a shout out because she told me that she bugged you to come on this podcast. She said that she was going to be a thorn in your side until you said yes.
Kelly: What Julie tells me to do, I do. She is the best salesperson there is, by the way. She’s, no, no, no, you have to do like and then she’s like, I’m going to keep calling you until you do, so I’m like, I promise. I promise.
Jag: Okay, so you mentioned coming to BCN from Buffalo, but your career started in Buffalo after you graduated, right?
Kelly: Yeah. So I went from Buffalo. I failed miserably. I did really well selling Z89. I did not do well selling in Buffalo, and it was definitely a crisis of confidence. And you just go to a different level of people have been selling for a long time. I’m like, wow, these people know so much more than I do. And it was really hard. Sales is hard, first of all. But I just was like, I’m not good at this. I cried. I was like, I might have to quit, and what am I going to do?
Kelly: And then, luckily, I didn’t get fired, but I should have been, probably. And then I went to Rochester for a year, and for some reason, I don’t know why, but Bill Sauer called me and said, hey, would you come back and do this business development role and be a manager? And I’m like, all right, sure. And so I did. And then I spent several more years in Buffalo and then had an opportunity to go to Boston.
Kelly: And I didn’t take it the first time, but I took it the second time, and I was ready to make a change and make a move. And like I said, sometimes you got to go to grow. And Ken Scott was somebody that I called and said, I’m negotiating my compensation, and I think this is where that gender difference will come in. And I was like, wow, it’s Boston. It’s so much more expensive than Buffalo.
Jag: Sure.
Kelly: I’m panicking. I can’t believe I would have had to make five times what I was making in Buffalo to be able to afford the same type of housing. And Ken’s, like, without hesitation says, well, Kelly, ask for X amount, and if they don’t give it to you, it’s not worth moving for.
Kelly: And it was a significant increase in compensation, and I have to say, I don’t even know if he remembers that conversation. I’m going to have to ask him when I talk to him. But I have to say that was a pivotal piece in someone else from Z89 saying, go for it. Ask for it. The worst they can do is say no. And that is something that I do hear over and over again over the years, is that women typically leave a lot of money on the table when they are negotiating their compensation, at whatever level it may be.
Kelly: But that was significant and they gave it to me and I took the job.
Jag: Wow, that’s an incredible learning experience for anybody in their 20s not having the confidence to ask for more money. But then to your point, especially with women being historically underpaid, really glad you shared that. So you get to Boston, you get to BCN, take me through your roles in Boston. And I say that out of genuine curiosity and not just because I’m a Bostonian myself.
Kelly: So BCN, legendary station, obviously. We carried the New England Patriots play by play. I was a business development manager there, worked with Julie. She was a national sales manager. Tony Baradini, Oedipus, who’s a famous program director, was our PD. And I was there for about a year and a half. Did really well. We sold sponsorships to, if you remember, the River Rave.
Jag: Big concert in Boston for those who aren’t familiar.
Kelly: Yep. Huge concert in Boston. And I will say, because of my experience in Buffalo, we had the Edge Concert Festival. Bill Sauer is like, it’s your baby, you do it. And I don’t know why he let me, but I did it without thinking. I didn’t overthink it. I just did it. And from there, I had an opportunity to switch over to Entercom. And there’s a fantastic GM there at the time. Her name was Julie Kahn. She’d been brought in to turn the stations around, as often happens in media.
Jag: Let me interrupt you for 1 second. I apologize. But this is when CBS became Entercom?
Kelly: No, CBS was still around. So this is back. This would be ’02.
Jag: Okay.
Kelly: And Julie had she’s like, I heard of you. You have a good reputation. I’m building a team of A players. I want you on my team. And I was like, I want to work for you. I want to be with the A team. And she was a game changer for me. We are still friends now, and I still see her. She’s out of the business now, but she was a fantastic mentor. And she’s another one that was a woman in the business that really rose up through the ranks.
Kelly: And she taught me a lot about business and negotiating and deals and crisis management, because when you work in sports talk, you deal with a lot of talent that can cross the line. And then advertisers get pissed off.
Jag: Absolutely.
Kelly: I lived through that many times. So those are interesting conversations to be had.
Jag: Okay, so I’m glad you clarified that because now, of course, Entercom and CBS merged later in 2017. So you went 15 years prior. You went from CBS over to Entercom. So you went from BCN to EEI. Was it then that you went?
Kelly: Yeah, so then we were selling all of the stations. So we had EEI, we had WAAF, we had WRKO, and we had Star 93.7. And some of those don’t exist anymore. And we had the Red Sox play by play, so doing sponsorship sales with the team there. And then we went through a merger. So my biggest sales deal with one of our clients that’s still on today and still is the official supermarket of the Red Sox Radio network, which is Shaws and Star Market.
Jag: I’m sorry, hang on. Let me go back to my roots here. Shaw’s and Stahhh Mahhhket.
Kelly: Exactly. Next, we’ll listen for your Joe Castiglione impression.
Jag: Everybody has one. Okay. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?
Kelly: Yes! Oh, my God. So, so fortunate to go to, as you mentioned, the World Series in ’04, which is historic, and Super Bowls. And it’s been a fantastic run, a fantastic run for sure. And then we merged with CBS Radio in 2017. And then a couple of years ago, Entercom changed the name to Audacy. And that’s where we stand today.
Jag: So you’ve been there. You’ve seen it all. And I promise to those non-Bostonians listening, this is not going to be a whole podcast about Boston sports. But just this question popped into my head, as you’ve mentioned. You’ve seen it all. You’ve seen all these championships. You’ve seen some not-so-great years. (This year.) Yeah, we’re recording this immediately after two of the worst losses in Patriots history. But that leads me to my question, Kelly, when the teams aren’t doing well, how much does that affect your role in sales?
Jag: Is it much harder or is it more about leaning on relationships at that point?
Kelly: You definitely have to lean on your relationships. And Boston definitely has, as you know, a significant fan base. And people are so passionate about the teams. And as we say, we don’t sell wins and losses. And you are selling a lot more than just a division or a World Series. You are selling the fan experience and what people can engage with, with the team. And that is what’s a big part of how I will bring sponsors through and actually help keep them is by engaging them with our talent. And so we own music stations. We do a significant amount of digital business now, too.
Kelly: So digital, you really have to play in that space, right, because of streaming and podcasting and the growth trajectory that that has really taken off, too. But really, our talent, who is creating that unique content is what people are just drawn to. And so it is all relationships, especially during COVID. Yeah, we lost tens of millions just in Boston. No play-by-play. Companies closing down, shutting down.
Kelly: Obviously, the Biogen Conference, it was the big starting point here, the basis of the epidemic. Pandemic, I should say, sorry. But to survive that, it’s all relationships because the ratings come and go. The audience. You’re selling an audience, and the audience still tunes in. They tune in differently now because they might stream the games, they might tune into podcasts, and you have to bring your clients along through that journey.
Kelly: And one of the things that’s really cool is at Femway Park is that we bring clients up to the broadcast booth, and they get to meet Joe Castiglione. Will Fleming, SU Alum. Sean McDonough is on Play by Play, who’s fantastic, as you know. And I couldn’t even believe I walk in one day, bring some clients up. There’s this young man who does the pre and post game show where’d you go to school? Where’d you go to school?
Kelly: Syracuse. Me, too. What year? I worked at the college radio station. Me, too. I’m Cooper. I was a sports director at Z89, and I was like, what?
Jag: We are everywhere.
Kelly: Everywhere. Everywhere.
Jag: And for those who don’t know, Joe Castiglione has been the radio voice of the Red Sox since, I want to say 1986. He’s a legend.
Kelly: Absolutely.
Jag: And since you’ve also worked the music side of it and again, I admit I’m jaded. My perspective, only having worked in the music side of the business, I feel like what really hurt the music side of it was when they told us, shut up and play the music. And it was all about the music, not the personalities. Compared to the spoken word side of it. News, talk, and sports, where the personalities are really the driving force of the radio station, whether it’s a morning show, whether it’s an afternoon talk show.
Jag: So I feel like there’s this, I don’t know if celebrity status is the right word. But, yes, you can bring a client into the press box at Fenway Park, and that obviously goes a great deal toward building that relationship. But also if you’re engaging with the hosts that have made names for themselves over however many years they’ve been on the air in Boston, that certainly, I’d imagine, plays into it, too, that you’re not selling wins and losses, like you said, Kelly, but in some ways, you’re almost selling the personalities of the hosts, too. Do I have that right?
Kelly: Without question. And that does keep us afloat, especially primetime. So Red Sox season, play by play, six, seven months out of the year hopefully goes into October, but more often you don’t make it into October playoffs. And our personalities are a part of every campaign that I do because it is an incredibly effective way for clients to win with radio and it’s impactful, it works, people talk about it.
Kelly: You have to extend it to social media. They have to have a social media presence. And I give our talent, any talent, whether you’re on a music station or a broadcast, because we live in a society that is so ready to cancel you. And G-d forbid you make a mistake and say something that you shouldn’t or was misconstrued or I’ve had many situations where, oh, I heard they said this, and I was like, well, let me go and pull the audio.
Kelly: And then of course I pull the audio and it’s like, well, did you hear the clip yourself? No, I just heard about it. I’m like, well, let me send it to you, telephone game, and let’s listen to it together. And even our music stations now, too, the importance of the personalities is so significant in order to win the ratings game in PPM. And they are difference makers, because it’s not just about the ratings, it is the touch points that they will make with our sponsors that support everything that we do over the air and online and on podcasting and events and concerts.
Jag: So even on the sales and the management side, just like on the on air side, you’re doing more with less bodies, it sounds.
Kelly: Oh, yes, yes, I’m sure everybody is.
Jag: Just for my clarification, you are in charge of all the Audacy stations in Boston right now as GSM or specific stations?
Kelly: Well, I’m not in charge of them because during COVID they, like happened in many places, they cut management heads. And so I went from management to selling because I handled some of our biggest sponsors. Anyway, I sell everything in the Boston market, new England, from over the air, digital. But also, too, I can sell national campaigns as well. So I’ve got some multi market campaigns that are running in multiple states in Audacy markets.
Jag: And what stations does Audacy have in Boston today in 2023?
Kelly: So we have WEEI still,.Mix 104, then we have Magic 106.7, and then we have Big 103.
Jag: Which as somebody who grew up there in the market but has been away for a few years now, when there was a lot of ownership changes in the market, it was hard to keep track of who owned what. So that had to be quite the adaptation for you as well, to be losing stations you’d had for a while and then bringing in others.
Kelly: Yes, and at the time when we were going through the merger, GSM for WEEI, so literally, because there’s two big sports stations in the market with us and with Sports Hub, and we were hoping to keep both sports stations, sure, but that didn’t happen. But the Department of Justice took my laptop, they download everything from your computer, they search everything and I’m like, okay, this is it. Really?
Kelly: The Boston market was the most complex market in that merger of figuring out the shuffle with audience share, revenue shares, who was getting what stations? Between us, Beasley and iHeart.
Jag: The impression that I got was because Boston is such a sports crazy market, that between EEI and the Sports Hub that represented such a huge share of audience and revenue that they couldn’t let one company own both of them. Did I interpret that right?
Kelly: Right. Yep. It was really fascinating. You know, I think one of the things that we learned is, know, when you’re combining cultures, it’s really hard.
Jag: Yeah.
Kelly: And CBS had their culture. We had our culture. It was exciting to grow and have a bigger footrprint. But you know, it was really hard. A lot of people got shuffled around. Some people, as you experienced yourself, was like, okay, now there’s duplicate jobs here. We don’t need both of you. Or there’s cost cutting stuff, too. So there’s nothing easy about that.
Jag: What would you tell somebody who wants to get into radio from, say, for example, the Z89 class of 24, about where radio is now and where it’s going and your outlook on the industry right now?
Kelly: I think that you have to really think about being in media nowadays, not just radio, because it is truly an audio play, not just an over the air play. So, just like you have found a lot of success in podcasting, the audio component, whether it’s over the air or streaming or podcasting, it’s just a much bigger platform. I think it’s harder to engage a younger group of folks because that’s not what they grew up with. So they grew up with social media, with Facebook and Instagram. And Twitter was not around when we were in school. Yeah, when I graduated in 92.
Kelly: But I will say I think it’s a fun business. I have lifelong friends. This career has been very good to me. Even through the ups and downs, I continue to learn new stuff every day, and that’s what keeps me in it. And it’s also very creative, and there’s a lot of grit involved when you’re in radio. It is not for the faint at heart. It’s not a job where you can coast.
Jag: I’d imagine a lot of that dates back to what you learned at JPZ.
Kelly: That’s a great point. It is. It is. Learned a lot of that stuff at JPZ. And if you’re willing to do the work, it’s a basis to really launch. I’ve met a lot of old radio people, and they always say the same thing, like, if you can do radio, you can do anything. So I commend the people that can do the on air, and that personality piece because that was not what I was good at at all. But I’m glad I found the other side of radio, which is the business side of it and the creative part of it.
Kelly: Outlets with marketing, but having the basis of really understanding the programming side that I learned at JPZ. A lot of those principles still apply now. So I’m grateful for having had the experience there because it’s been very good to me and really teaches you to be resilient in this life that we all share and we’re all connected in some way and we don’t lose sight of that. And it’s just been fantastic to reconnect with everybody because I went away from it for a while.
Kelly: Life got very busy.
Jag: And I think that’s true for a lot of us. Speaking of, I want to ask you about your son. You post about your son a lot on social media. Tell the audience who doesn’t know you very well. Tell us about your son.
Kelly: So I actually have two boys, Devin and Brady. Devin is my oldest son. He is 27, but he’s severe special needs. I get choked up. (That’s okay.) Yeah. So he’s without question the most courageous person I know. And if you want to talk about resilience, he is the definition. One of the stories I’ll share about Julie Bruno is I was still living in Buffalo when Devin was born, and he was a surprise baby from a relationship that was not good.
Kelly: And he had a traumatic brain injury when he was an infant at just two months old. And the support that I got from the guys that I worked with at that station and remembering now as the only female salesperson at that station when I first started. (Wow.) I know, right? And so it’s interesting to look back on, but when I met Julie, I shared Devin’s story with her. And Devin has pretty much spent the first three years of his life in hospitals. And he’s blind, he’s in a wheelchair, he’s nonverbal. He needs a one to one for everything that he does.
Kelly: But I have to say, he laughs a lot. He smiles a lot. Some of the posts you will see is we do adaptive baseball with the Miracle League. We go skiing in the winter. We do adaptive skiing. He’s done adaptive horseback riding. I’ve taken him parasailing. I’ve taken him on jet skis.
Jag: That’s amazing.
Kelly: Yeah, it’s amazing. I’m like, I’ll try anything with him. And he is somebody that has been incredibly resilient. And Julie’s the one… It’s very hard. It’s overwhelming. Julie is the one that said to me the first day I met her, and for some reason I told her all about Devin and she said, you have got to go see Prita. And I was like, who’s Prita? She’s like, she is the most amazing therapist you will ever meet.
Jag: Wow.
Kelly: And you want to talk about a gift that somebody gives you? And as I told you before, I always do what Julie tells me to do. And I started going to you know, certainly the amount of awareness around mental health these days is so much more prevalent than it was 20 years ago.
Jag: Absolutely.
Kelly: Which is so important to be able to really start to become aware of the thoughts you’ve got running through your head. But I will say I use my work to avoid dealing with the pain and overwhelm of all the trauma that I went through with him and saw him go through. I mean, he almost died a few times. That’s why I say he’s courageous and resilient. So Prita is an amazing therapist. She does a lot of trauma work, and that has been a life changing piece of advice that Julie gave me, and I am forever grateful to her for that.
Jag: So you’re a single mom, special needs son, new town, and all of a sudden friendly face, hey, I worked at Z89, too. And it really is and I’m not trying to lessen the story here, but the fact that just one more piece of a Z89 connection of somebody that you didn’t even go to school together with. (Yes.) And what you told me about that one piece of advice and how life changing that was for you, that’s really something else.
Jag: And full disclosure, I asked Kelly before we sat down, I asked her if she was comfortable talking about this, and to her great credit, she said yes. So just so the audience knows, I didn’t spring this on her out of the blue or anything.
Kelly: Yeah, then you didn’t bring me to tears. I think, Jon, that’s part of the reason why when we talked I can’t believe it was a year ago. Hal Rood was like, please, you got to talk to Jon, do the podcast. And I was like, it brought up a lot of stuff.
Jag: Sure.
Kelly: Because I was so young when I mean, 25 to me is young now. Here, you run a college radio station and then your life falls apart and you go, “Fuck! What the fuck happened?” The journey. And I would say, whether it’s the universe coming in and giving you these signs, and sometimes you take it and sometimes you don’t. But I have to say, every time I listen to my instincts or that great advice that I’ve gotten, and whether it was from Julie or Ken or Henry or Hal, it’s like all these different people saying, hey, you gotta do, like, try it.
Kelly: So I thank them for sometimes giving me the shove and for you bringing it up, because I wasn’t sure how to think about that. And it’s part of the reason why I didn’t go back to Banquet for so long. I was really overwhelmed. I was trying to work and take care of him and find him resources and everything like that, too. He’s healthy, he’s stable. We have a good care team for him. We see him all the time, he is my greatest teacher for sure.
Jag: How old is Brady?
Kelly: Brady is 17. And he’s playing a lot of baseball, and he’s playing football, and he is looking at colleges this year. And so we’re going through that process. He’s actually a junior right now, so we’ll see what path he decides to take.
Jag: I’m going to go out on a limb. I’m doing the math on Brady’s age. I’m going to guess there’s a lot of boys named Brady in his class.
Kelly: There are. And actually, I met his dad. We worked together at WEEI, and he was a big sports seller for WEEI. And there are a lot of Brady’s in New England. And we miss Brady, that’s for sure.
Jag: Again, to timestamp this October 10, this might be the most we’ve missed Brady in quite some time.
Kelly: Yes.
Jag: Kelly Sutton, I really want to thank you for coming on the podcast today, for being a trailblazer in WJPZ’s history and in your career as well, the amazing things you’ve accomplished from Buffalo to Boston in terms of radio and, of course, being willing to share your son’s story and your personal story when it comes to mental health. I’ve been seeing the same therapist for several years myself here in Detroit, and I think it is so good that we are finally talking about that.
Jag: And as you said, it’s out in the open more and I think as we get into millennial, gen Z, Gen Alpha, whatever you want to call it, I think that stigma is slowly starting to ebb and I think that’s a wonderful thing. So I’m glad you brought that up. And congratulations on all your success in Syracuse and since. And thank you so much for joining us today.
Kelly: Thank you so much. You’re amazing and I’m so glad that we got to meet and I really appreciate you doing all this and being able to share all of these stories.