Veteran WTIC-AM personality Ray Dunaway to retire after nearly three decades

Ray Dunaway, the morning radio personality who followed the legendary Bob Steele on WTIC-AM and won over listeners with a relaxed but informed conversational style, will retire from the radio station next month after 29 years.

“You just get tired of waking up,” Dunaway said. “You just do. I love the morning. I do. I wouldn’t do any other shift, but the thing is, after a period of time, it’s kind of like you’ve been there, done that. And I think it’s time for somebody fresh to take a look at it.”

Dunaway, 72, said the decision to retire from the morning show, which airs weekdays from 5:30 a.m. to 9 a.m., was entirely his own. His last show will be on Dec. 24.

His co-host, Brian Shactman, will continue to host the morning show, the station’s parent company, Audacy, said.

Dunaway was hired to replace Steele in 1992, bringing with him more than two decades of radio experience elsewhere in the country.

Steele had a storied local broadcasting career spanning more than five decades, and Dunaway would be Steele’s second replacement. Steele’s immediate successor lasted just a year.

“The fact of the matter is, it was nerve-wracking because I had gone to Trinity [College] and my roommate used to listen to Bob religiously,” Dunaway said. “He was really good. It was a great responsibility taking over that job.”

Quick acceptance wasn’t a sure thing for Dunaway with the memory of Steele still fresh and dissatisfaction among some viewers about a move by WTIC to talk radio.

“Connecticut-ites weren’t necessarily going to make that easy,” recalled Gary Zenobi, then general manager of WTIC, who hired Dunaway. “But he filled Bob Steele’s shoes in a different way. Formats were changing. Ray was just perfect for that because he could hold a conversation not just about anything but with anyone.”

Dunaway’s arrival also coincided with rapid changes in AM radio. WTIC’s daytime music listeners were moving to FM radio, leaving AM stations like WTIC to carve out a different niche, which turned out to be talk radio.

Dunaway’s popularity with listeners survived four ownership changes at WTIC and a relocation from One Financial Plaza, the “Gold Building” in downtown Hartford, to Farmington in the early 2000s.

The tone of talk radio has turned more contentious and far less civil since Dunaway joined WTIC.

“It is polarizing, no doubt, but the good ones try to make it as fair as they possibly can,” Dunaway said. “You can have your point of view. There’s nothing wrong with that, and you are able to share it.”

Dunaway said he worked earlier in his career with conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh, who died in February. Dunaway said he considered Limbaugh someone who thought things through before expressing his opinions. Limbaugh would also become part of the weekday lineup on WTIC.

Dunaway said there now is pressure to mix it up whether it be on radio or television.

“The whole thing is fight-sell,” Dunaway said. “People like fights. It doesn’t help anything. [Conservative intellectual] William F. Buckley wouldn’t have survived today.”

Dunaway said he has strived to keep the morning show on the lighter side.

One of this favorite interviews came in 1994 when then-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton came on the air to push her husband’s plan for health care reform.

Clinton jolted local listeners with the frank assessment that the plan might cost some jobs — paper-pushing jobs, as she called them — in Hartford. Some of those jobs, Dunaway said, were in buildings he could see from his studio on the 19th floor of the Gold Building.

Dunaway, according to a report in The Courant, observed the government didn’t have a great track record of containing costs, asking, “How can we trust you this time?”

Return to Hartford

When Dunaway arrived in downtown Hartford in 1992, he found a city changed vastly in appearance from when he attended Trinity two decades earlier. The 1980s building boom had given rise to skyscrapers like CityPlace and Goodwin Square.

But the early 1990s also was marked by economic recession and a bad after-taste from the Colonial Realty Co. collapse that cost “Mom & Pop” investors their life savings in a bigger-than-life fraud scheme.

Dunaway said the election of Hartford Mayor Michael P. Peters, the wisecracking firefighter, in 1993, started to turn things around. The two quickly became good friends and often ran into each other at the old Chuck’s steakhouse in downtown Hartford. Peters, who died in 2009, was a frequent guest on Dunaway’s show.

“Mike Peters got things done. ... He had no real political power, but through the force of his personality managed to get things done,” Dunaway said. “He changed the attitude, let’s put it that way.”

That set the stage for big-ticket Hartford investments like the Connecticut Convention Center, Front Street — and more recently, the addition of thousands of apartments downtown, Dunaway said.

Dunaway started in radio at age 17 on a Topeka, Kansas, station before attending Trinity. It was at this station where Dunaway — born Goldsich — would get his professional name.

“I wanted be J. Michael Wilson or Ray Michael Wilson,” Dunaway said. “The guy at the station said, ‘Nah, I don’t like that name. Let’s find another one.’ So, he got the phone book and he said, ‘Ray Rodriguez? How about Ray Dunaway?’ I said, ‘Sure.’ I wanted the job.”

Later, Dunaway worked in Detroit, Dallas and Los Angeles before spending 15 years at KMBZ-AM in Kansas City, Missouri, as morning show host.

In Greater Hartford, Dunaway’s popularity has drawn attention to philanthropic causes, one of the largest being the annual Salvation Army Holiday Store. Dunaway got involved soon after arriving in Hartford, broadcasting his shows daily from holiday-store locations each December.

The holiday store first started on Pratt Street in downtown Hartford and later moved to Avon and Glastonbury.

Salvation Army Major Migdalia Lavenbein, area coordinator for Greater Hartford, said the holiday store has raised millions since Dunaway became involved.

“Even beyond the money, he has helped transform lives; we’re not just talking about toys and food and monetary gifts,” Lavenbein said. “He has been in the business of helping people who were at the bottom. They’ve hit rock bottom, and he’s helped lift people up and place them in a position where they have hope. You can’t say that about everyone.”

Dunaway’s last day at WTIC will be when the holiday store wraps up for the season on Christmas Eve.

And after that? Well, Dunaway said he has to figure out what retirement will be. He plans to stay in the area but do some traveling — and read. “I love to read,” he said.

One thing he is absolutely sure about, though is this: “I just don’t want to see another sunrise,” Dunaway said, quickly adding, “Now don’t take that the wrong way.”

Kenneth R. Gosselin can be reached at kgosselin@courant.com.