Paul Harvey
For the Stuckist artist, see Paul Harvey (artist).Paul Harvey Aurandt (born
September 4,
1918), better known as
Paul Harvey, is an
American radio broadcaster for the
ABC Radio Networks. He broadcasts a monologue at 8:30am ET in the morning (5 minutes) and at 11:30am (15 minutes) Monday through Friday and at noon on Saturday. His shows are mostly news and commentary as well as his famous "
The Rest of the Story" segment. His listening audience is estimated at 22 million people a week. Harvey likes to say he was raised in radio newsrooms.
The most noticeable features of Harvey's idiosyncratic delivery are his dramatic pauses, quirky intonations and his folksiness. A large part of his success stems from the seamlessness with which he segues from his monologue into reading commercial messages. He explains his enthusiastic support of his sponsors as such: "I am fiercely loyal to those willing to put their money where my mouth is."
Harvey, born and raised in
Tulsa, Oklahoma, made radio sets as a boy. In
1933, at a high school teacher's suggestion, he started working at KVOO in Tulsa, where he helped clean up and eventually was allowed to fill in on the air, reading commercials and news.
Later, while attending the
University of Tulsa, he continued working at KVOO as an announcer, and later as a program director. Harvey spent three years as a station manager for a local station in
Salina, Kansas. From there, he moved to a newscasting job at
KOMA-AM in
Oklahoma City, then moved on to KXOK, in
St. Louis, where he was Director of Special Events and also worked as a roving reporter.
In
1940, Harvey moved to
Hawaii to cover the
U.S. Navy as it concentrated its fleet in the Pacific. He was returning to the United States from assignment in Hawaii when the
Japanese attacked
Pearl Harbor. Harvey then enlisted in the
United States Army Air Forces, where he served until
1944.
After leaving military service, Harvey moved to
Chicago, where in June 1944, he began broadcasting from the ABC affiliate WENR. He quickly became the most popular newscaster in Chicago. In
1945, he began hosting the postwar employment program
Jobs for G.I. Joe on ABC affiliate WENR. Harvey added "The Rest of the Story" segments to his newscasts in
1946. The spots became their own series in 1976. In
1951, the ABC Radio Networks carried Paul Harvey's show
News and Comment coast-to-coast, and it has continued ever since.
At that time, America was at the height of the
Red Scare and Harvey had been criticizing the federal government's perceived poor security. In order to bolster his allegations, based on a tip from a guard at the
Argonne National Laboratory, he attempted to infiltrate the lab. He enlisted the aid of the guard who had given him the tip, Charles Rogan, and John Crowley, an employee of the
Office of Naval Intelligence. On
February 6,
1951, he and his partners went to the perimeter of the lab around 1 a.m. Harvey climbed over the fence, but his overcoat caught on the barbed wire atop the fence. While he was trying to extricate himself, a security patrol found and apprehended him, turning him over to the
FBI. Eventually, a
grand jury cleared him of all charges.
From the late
1960s through the early
1980s, there was a televised, 5 minute editorial by Paul Harvey that local stations could insert into their local news programs, or show separately. On
May 10,
1976, ABC Radio Networks spun off
The Rest of the Story as a separate series which provided endless surprises as Harvey dug into stories behind the stories of famous events and people (although many stories reported on
The Rest of the Story are factually inaccurate). Harvey's son, a concert pianist, helped write the show.
In late 2000, Harvey signed a 10-year, $100 million contract with ABC Radio Networks. A few months later, he was off the air after damaging his
vocal cords. He returned in late August 2001.
Paul Harvey News has been called the "largest one-man network in the world", as it is carried on 1,200 radio stations, 400 Armed Forces Network stations around the world and 300 newspapers. His broadcasts and newspaper columns have been reprinted in the
Congressional Record more than those of any other commentator.
Harvey's
News and Comment is streamed on the
World Wide Web twice a day.
He has been named Salesman of the Year, Commentator of the Year, Person of the Year, Father of the Year, and American of the Year. He has been elected to the National Association of Broadcasters
Radio Hall of Fame and Oklahoma Hall of Fame and appeared on the
Gallup poll list of America's most admired men. In addition he has received 11 Freedom Foundation Awards as well as the
Horatio Alger Award.
In
2005, he was awarded the
Presidential Medal of Freedom, the
United States' most prestigious civilian award, by
President George W. Bush .
When Harvey was 3, his father, Harry H. Aurandt, a police officer with the Tulsa Police Department, was gunned down while trying to arrest a suspect.
Harvey is married to Lynne Harvey (
née Cooper) of St. Louis. When Harvey was working at KXOK he met Lynne Cooper when she came to the station for a school news program. Harvey invited her to dinner, proposed to her after a few minutes of conversation and from then on called her Angel. A year later she said yes. Lynne Harvey is a member of
Phi Beta Kappa and is a former school teacher. Harvey himself was a member of
Lambda Chi Alpha at Culver-Stockton College in Missouri.
They have one son, Paul Aurandt Jr., who goes by the name Paul Harvey Jr., and assists his father at "News and Comment" and "The Rest of the Story." Paul, Jr. has filled in for his father during broadcasts and was able to duplicate his father's speaking style to some extent. However, in
2006,
ABC Radio signed
Fred Dalton Thompson as Harvey's primary fill-in and eventual successor.
* "Hello, Canadians/Americans, this Is Paul Harvey!" followed immediately by...
** "Stand by for
news!" or
** "You know what the news is. Now you're going to hear ... the r-r-r-rest of the story!" or
** "Good morning, Americans ... it's Friday!"
* "Page – [pause] – two (three, four, etc.)" – Signaling a commercial break.
* "Today's news of most lasting significance might be this ..."
* To Richard Nixon, on the
Vietnam War: "Mr. President, I love you, but you're wrong."
* "Retiring is just practicing up to be dead. That doesn't take any practice."
* "Every pessimist who ever lived has been buried in an unmarked grave. Tomorrow has always been better than today, and it always will be."
* To
Larry King in a
2003 interview: "The best time is
right now."
* "Yes, It's true. Just like your local
True Value Hardware store."
(True Value was a longtime sponsor of Paul Harvey's programs.)* On his wife: "She is still one of the daintiest, most feminine creatures I've ever known."
* "And now, for what it's worth, ..." – Lead-in to funny story closing the newscast.
* "When the salad plates were whisked away and the entrée brought in, he leaned over toward me and said, 'Page ... two,' just like he does on the radio." —
Garrison Keillor when he met Harvey at a "stuffed-shirt" dinner in Chicago.
* "And remember, it's His birthday – [pause] – not yours." (Traditional Christmas Eve closer)
* "We hope you'll do better – [pause] – you could do worse." (Annual message to graduating seniors extolling the accomplishments of their parents' generation.)
* "... and now you know [pause] the Rest of the Story."
* "Paul Harvey.— [pause] —Good day!" (intonation rising significantly on "day")
Controversial Quotes
In a 2005 monologue, the U.S. response to the
World Trade Center attacks prompted Harvey to wax nostaglic.:
Winston Churchill was not here to remind us that we didn't come this far because we're made of sugar candy. So, following the New York disaster, we mustered our humanity. We gave old pals a pass, even though men and money from
Saudi Arabia were largely responsible for the devastation of New York and Pennsylvania and our Pentagon. We called Saudi Arabians our partners against terrorism and we sent men with rifles into Afghanistan and Iraq, and we kept our best weapons in our silos. Even now we're standing there dying, daring to do nothing decisive because we've declared ourselves to be better than our terrorist enemies feeling guilty about their savage pasts--eventually civilize themselves out of business and wind up invaded and ultimately dominated by the lean, hungry up-and-coming who are not made of sugar candy.
*
Autumn of Liberty.
Garden City, N.Y.: Hanover House,
1954.
*
The Rest of the Story. Garden City, N.Y.: Hanover House, 1956.
*
Our Lives, Our Fortunes, Our Sacred Honor.
Waco, Tx.: Word Books, 1975.
*
Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story. Garden City, N.Y.:
Doubleday, 1977. ISBN 0385127685
*
More of Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story.
New York: William Morrow, 1980, ISBN 0688036694
*
Destiny: From Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story. New York: William Morrow, 1983, ISBN 0688022057
*
Paul Harvey's For What It's Worth. New York:
Bantam Books, 1991, ISBN 0553077201.
# #
2005 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients.*
Paul Harvey official site.
*
Paul Harvey's Tulsa roots.
*
Paul Harvey profile, NNDB.
