When Mary McCoy, at age 87, delivered her nine-minute acceptance speech at the Country Radio Hall of Fame induction on July 21, she made it to the stage through a level of resilience and determination that she never shared with the audience.
She’s been on the radio for 74 years — that’s a feat in itself — but McCoy continues in that role despite breaking her neck in 2013. For the last dozen years, she’s moved through life with metal holding her spine together awkwardly, restricting her mobility and her comfort. It has not restricted her commitment.
Even when the accident and the surgery were fresh, McCoy refused to take any substantial time off from her air shift, where she’s been teamed with Larry Galla for more than three decades.
“I was in a halo for three months,” she recalled in a one-hour interview the day before her induction. “But that didn’t stop me. I was in a hospital bed in my home but I called Larry. I said, ‘Larry, I’m going on the air with you.’ He said, ‘Mary, you can’t do it.’ I said, ‘Yes, I can.’ I looked like Frankenstein. I took my telephone, I worked it down between those bars [on the halo], and every morning I was on the air.”
The hall of fame evening was a night to recognize longevity. It marked the 50th anniversary of the hall, and the class included iHeartRadio national country format coordinator Gregg Swedberg, who’s been with KEEY Minneapolis for 34 years; The Original Country Gold host Rowdy Yates, currently marking 40 years in broadcasting; and WOKQ Dover-Portsmouth, N.H., brand manager/personality Ginny Rogers Brophey, whose history includes over two decades in the same office as her husband, 2014 Hall of Fame inductee Mike Brophey, in Boston.
“People wonder, ‘How did you guys work together at the same station for 25 years?’ ” Ginny noted during her acceptance speech. “I honestly don’t know. I always say he was the boss at work but I was the boss at home, and that’s how we balanced it.”
Also inducted were Big D & Bubba hosts Derek Haskins and Sean Powell and former iHeartMedia executive vp of programming Clay Hunnicutt, bringing the total number of inductees to 207. Frontline Recordings/BMG Americas president Jon Loba also received the President’s Award.
Enhancing the evening’s longevity theme, WSM-AM Nashville personality and Grand Ole Opry announcer Bill Cody served as host, even as the Opry celebrates 100 years on the air.
Like the Opry, McCoy represents a connection to a bygone era in radio. When she made her first appearance, at age 12 on KCMO Conroe, Texas, it wasn’t as a DJ. She sang live, and she was so disheartened by her own performance that she cried when it aired. But a local business, the Brown Sinclair Service Station, came on board as a sponsor and she ended up with a 15-minute regular time slot.
McCoy sensed that radio was her life’s calling, and her life definitely changed because of it. The family had lived for four years in a tent, and she felt the sting of social disapproval from her peers.
“I was in the fifth grade and a lot of them looked down on me because they knew where we lived,” she told Billboard.
Alongside her radio career, she pursued a recording track, working with producer Huey Meaux (Freddy Fender, B.J. Thomas) and sharing stages with George Jones and Elvis Presley. Meaux’s production of “Deep Elem Blues,” featuring her as the lead singer for The Cyclones, became a regional hit.
“That record got more play,” she says. “We’d be driving along and switching from KILT. I’d hear the beginning of it, move to another station and hear the ending of it on that station. They had to tie me down in the back seat of the car that day because I was so excited.”
While the artist gig proceeded, the radio career stuck, in part because she had such an appreciation for the audience. Her routine started with a recitation of the local birthdays, and she gave away a birthday cake on a daily basis.
“People still come and tell me, ‘Mary, you gave me a birthday cake,’ ” she says.
Even today, she often signs off from her two-hour, classic-country shift by thanking the audience for listening: “Without you, there’s no us.”
McCoy was so devoted to that audience, and to the station itself, that she declined several opportunities to leave Conroe for bigger markets. She even turned down an offer from a crosstown station because she was so loyal to KMCO. So that rival owner, former classmate Rigby Owen, bought KMCO and changed the call letters to KIKR.
She joined KVST in 1992, working both on-air and in a sales capacity, which further bonded her to the local community. In the process, she became a Conroe legend — musical trends, TV shows and fashion styles might come and go, but Mary McCoy was always there.
“She’s the strongest person I know,” Galla said via video in her Hall of Fame induction. “She’s beautiful inside and out.”
As the years started piling up on her résumé, McCoy began to get recognized for her steadfast presence. She joined the Texas Radio Hall of Fame in 2010 and the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2024. In December, the town of Conroe installed a bronze bust of McCoy at Founders Plaza, a city park that’s a short walk from the place where her career in radio started. Guinness World Records certified her as the longest-running female host in radio history. She’s contemplating how, and when, her run might end, though radio has been such a foundational part of her existence that she can’t fully grasp her world without it.
“It’s been a journey, and I know that the time has come that [I may] have to [stop],” she says. “But it’s going to be hard to walk away, because that’s been my life.”
