Paul Harvey

He met Lynne Cooper, a schoolteacher, while he was working at KXOX. He fell in love with her at their first meeting and proposed to her on their very first date! They got married in 1940 and had one son. The couple remained happily married till Lynne’s death.

He remained very active even during his later years, still presenting programs well into his late eighties. After living a long and productive life, he died in 2009 at the age of 90.

He was born as Paul Harvey Aurandt on September 4, 1918 to Harry Harrison Aurandt and Anna Dagmar. He had one older sister.

His father was a policeman who was shot to death by robbers when little Paul was just three years old.

He attended Tulsa’s Central High School. There a teacher, Isabelle Ronan was highly impressed by his voice and recognized his potential as a future radio broadcaster.

Ronan took him to the radio station KVOO in 1933 and recommended him to the station manager. He was just 14 at that time and initially he was told to help in cleaning up. With time he was allowed to read commercials before being handed the responsibility of reading the news.

He furthered his education at the University of Tulsa. Even while studying there he continued working at KVOO. Initially he was an announcer and later became a program director.

He was just 19 when he became a station manager for the radio station KFBI AM (later renamed as KFDI). After working there for three years he got a newscasting job at KOMA in Oklahoma City.

In 1938 he landed on a job at KXOX in St. Louis as a reporter and Director of Special Events. This place proved very lucky for him as this is where he met the woman he would one day marry.

He went to Hawaii as a reporter to cover the United States Navy’s activities as it concentrated its fleet in the Pacific. During this time the Japanese attacked the Pearl Harbour.

He enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps in the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor but served only for a very short time from December 1943 to March 1944 when he was discharged. The reasons behind his discharge are not clear.

After his stint with the army he moved to Chicago in 1944. He started working for the ABC affiliate WENR where he began hosting the ‘Jobs for G.I. Joe’, a postwar employment program, in 1945. The next year, he added the segment, ‘The Rest of the Story’ as part of his newscasts.

He is best remembered as the presenter of the segment ‘The Rest of the Story’ which had started as a part of his newscasts before premiering on its own as a series. The series was so popular that it ran till Harvey died at the age of 90.