There are so few times any on-air personality actually talks about the weird workings of radio, it stands out when they do. Jerry Agar took a moment out of his show earlier this week to recall one such story about how a massively successful talk host took advantage of a tragedy to get his big break.

The guy's name was Neal Boortz, who would one day have his own nationwide conservative syndicated talk show that aired on dozens of stations. Boortz had some limited radio experience but never really made it anywhere. One day, he was listening to a local Atlanta talk station, WRNG-AM, announcing a terrible tragedy - its morning show host had suddenly committed suicide, leaving the place in shock and without an AM drive host. 

The next morning, the G.M. arrived at the Atlanta station bright and early to deal with the after-effects of the tragedy. He found Boortz sitting in the parking lot in a lawn chair, apparently having arrived hours earlier in the pitch darkness. When the guy got out of his car to figure out what was going to happen next, Boortz approached him, issued his condolences and asked him who was going to take over the morning show.

"We're getting our afternoon guy to do it," came the reply.

"OK," Boortz went on. "Who's doing afternoons?" The G.M. admitted they hadn't figured that out yet. At which point Boortz offered to take his place until they could come up with someone else. The exec. knew Boortz had some radio experience and recognized him as a frequent glib caller. With the entire schedule up in the air and somewhat desperate to fill in a large hole, he agreed to give him a chance for one day. 

Boortz went on the air that afternoon. He was good enough to earn another week in the slot. And another. And pretty soon, he became their permanent afternoon drive host, eventually graduating to the morning slot he'd originally asked about.

Neal Boortz wound up so successful, he went to law school, worked in radio part time and eventually quit the bar to front his own national U.S. talk show. He retired in 2013. 

It's a strange tale but Agar swears Boortz himself told him the story when he met him. I suspect it's not how most of us got our start. But it's certainly one of the stranger success stories in a business that's full of them.