Dave Glover celebrates 25 years in radio this week

By Sally Tippett Rains

This week is a big one in the life of Dave Glover of KMOX Radio, as he celebrates 25 years in radio on Thursday, October 16.

Since it’s mid-October, he was hoping to be watching the Cardinals in the playoffs, but he is celebrating his milestone with trips down memory lane instead. A lot can happen in in 25 years and some of it included baseball. He is shown in the photo above, with Kevin Wheeler and former Cardinal President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak.

“I am a huge Cardinals fan.” Glover told STL Sports Page. ” I was obsessed with baseball since I was little. I knew all the teams in the division, all the players, all the statistics.”

Nowadays he gets to talk about the Cardinals or whatever is going on in St. Louis on his show on KMOX.

“Once I got to KMOX, and was a part of the Cardinals family, it reignited my love for the game and the team,” he said. “I made a goal to go to 20 home games this past season, and made it to 34”.

Glover is a local boy makes good.  He was born in South Roxana, Illinois and went to SIUE on a track scholarship. He graduated from Wash U Law. With his law degree in hand, he spent ten years as a lawyer before hanging that up to be a radio host on KFTK 97.1.

“When I first took the job on 97.1 FM it was to do a two hour ‘ask the lawyer’ segment,” Glover said,  “However, I didn’t know that much about the Law,  (ha) so within the first six months it turned into basically what it has been for the past 25 years, sort of a slice-of-life, introspective comedy show.”

From his first day he knew he really enjoyed doing the radio– so much that he didn’t even charge that station at first.

“I did the radio show for free for the first six months,” he said. “A that point, I told the bosses that if they paid me $100 a day, I would stop being a lawyer and pursue radio. In hindsight, it was probably a pretty shortsighted and stupid decision, but somehow, it all worked out, and I have not been back in a courtroom in 25 years.”

His lawyer friends might have objected to his working for free but he had a feeling he was about to step into a career that he was going to love and where he would end up making just as much an impact on peoples lives as a lawyer might, but in different ways.

Most radio announcers or talk show hosts have been to Journalism School or taken broadcasting classes. As he embarked on this new journey he knew it was a little late for the media classes. Turns out so much of being a lawyer has to do with communication and asking questions and thinking on your feet. It seemed to be something he could ease into.

“No one helped me at all, and I think that was by design,” he said. “It’s not to say that the people on my show like Tom and Katy were not incredibly helpful, they are the reason I am here today, but the bosses didn’t try to teach me anything or instruct me on how to do a show. I think they figured that it would either work or not, and since I had no training to start with, there was no sense in starting on the job. Thankfully, it all worked out.”

One of the plusses of being on the radio is the name recognition and the chance to meet so many people. In his 25 years Glover has been involved in charity broadcasts, but in the past couple of years he has taken his involvement in the community a step further.  In 2024 he found out about Bethesda Hospice Care’s “No One Dies Alone” program because they helped him when his mother was in hospice. It was so important to him that he decide to take the six class training session and become  a volunteer.

His radio show gives him the opportunity to talk about anything he wants from the absurd and silly to serious things like volunteering at Bethesda. After hearing him talk about it several listeners actually signed up and took the training session.

Glover was on 97.1 for 20 years and now for the past five years he’s been the afternoon host on KMOX. As he approaches the quarter of a century mark in his broadcasting career he looks back on all that has happened that has gotten him to where he is today.

When asked about a highlight of his career he said he could not name just one, but there are moments that stand out, like that conversation on his show with a caller named Mary.

To set the stage, he had not been to work for a few days, spending time with his family after  his brother passed away. Years later it’s easier to talk about  and he did that in an interview with St. Louis Magazine where he talked about his brother’s suicide, saying “My brother shot himself.”\

But at the time it was still  new and very personal and he was still grieving.  When he went to work that day, he had planned on mentioning it at the beginning of his first show back and then going on to other topics and hopefully a lively show.

“I planned on talking about it briefly and then moving on, but two hours later, I found myself still talking about his death,” said Glover. “At that point, a woman named Mary called the show and told me that she did not know me, had never heard of me, but was looking for some music to listen to, because she was on her way to commit suicide.”

Dave Glover could not believe what he was hearing. In an odd way he was placed in the perfect position to help her. In fact he didn’t realize it until she told him but hearing him talk about his brother’s death had an impact on her.

“She was on medication for depression and had stopped taking her medication a few weeks before,” he said. “She was calling to let me know that, after hearing the story of my brother, she was at St. John’s Mercy, and she was going to get help.”

One doesn’t know the impact they can make on others.

On his show  he discusses any topic from current events, news and politics and most of the time show listeners find themselves laughing along, making the drivetime traffic a little more tolerable. Along with guests,  Glover shares the microphone with with Rachel Zimmerman, Trish Gazall, Kevin Wheeler.

Twenty five years is his burden of proof that he made the right decision taking his law degree into the broadcast booth.

The Dave Glover Show is on KMOX Radio weekdays  from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Glover  is launching a new podcast with Gazall (KEZK radio host) which will be entertainment and slice of life discussions.