F2K Ep. 14: KID'S CORNER Host Kathy O'Connell

Fun 2 Know Podcast

Kathy O'Connell, the Peabody award-winning host of WXPN's KID'S CORNER and formerly KIDS AMERICA is our guest. In a medium famous for its transient careers, Kathy has remained an institution in Philly, broadcasting her children's live call-in talk show for over twenty five years, bringing generations of kids to their radios with her gregarious nature, her library of music for for taking calls from kids engaged by a wide variety of topics the show has touched on over the years. Kathy's skills flow so naturally in part because she spent a good portion of her youth as a somewhat crazily devoted fan of kid's show legend Soupy Sales, who ruled the New York airwaves in the 1960s. Kathy haunted the show's taping with a small army of similarly obsessed, mostly young girl fans, and fomented a relationship with the comic in his later years. While Soupy and his wife Trudy became like parents to Kathy, the story of her own family exudes some very real drama, as well as her travels throughout her radio career, including a late 70s stint at New York's fabled listener-funded community station WBAI of the Pacifica network. Along the way a lot of old show biz names are dropped, we talk about kids today, the joys of television, The Beatles, John Lennon's death and lots of discussion about the life and career of Soupy Sales, with Kathy's dog Colby occasionally calling from off-stage.