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| SATURDAY DECEMBER 26 | SUNDAY DECEMBER 27 2015
THE NORTH SHORE WEEKEND
SUNDAY BREAKFAST
Radio funny man Bill Leff proves that you can be a nice guy on the air—and in life.
When we’re on the air, we’re just talking and people who listen to us icki Milin thinks Popeye had a regularly hang on to the t’s a Thursday evening in down- smallest details. Sometimes town Evanston and Bluestone it shocks me.” regulars are flocking to the eatLeff began his career in ery’s outdoor seats. entertainment as a standup comic “If you didn’t love fall in Evan- and did this successfully for more ston before, what about this?” asks than 10 years. It wasn’t until he WGN Radio’s mid-day host Bill and his wife decided to have a Leff of this unseasonably warm family that he began to look for day. An Evanstonian for nearly a something that would keep him 25 years, Leff knows of what he home. “I got to be friends with speaks. Danny Bonaduce who at the time “I grew up in Oak Forest. Even had a show on The Loop. I was though it only takes 45 minutes on with him almost every Friday. to get there, it feels like it’s a One day he asked me how million miles away,” he says. “I things were going. I told used to be mad at my parents that him great, but that my wife they knew about Evanston and and I were hoping to have kept it from us.” kids and I didn’t think Making sure his children— doing standup would let twins Kiley and Reese—don’t me be involved with my accuse him of the same thing kids the way I wanted to some day, he and his wife Teri be. So he said, ‘Why don’t have built a life in Evanston. “On you get a radio show?’ You any given night, there are about don’t just go and get a radio 15 restaurants where we might show. So, he said he’d set it choose to have dinner,” says Leff up for me. I really thought enjoying a club soda, straight up. that was the end of it. But “My wife is a terrible cook. If she three weeks later, the guys sees this in print, she’ll initial that. who ran The Loop called and So we eat out a lot. At a place like said ‘you want to do this?’ They Bluestone, we almost always run were looking for a partner for into a few friends.” Wendy and I thought, what do One of the job hazards of I have to lose?” working on one of Chicago’s most The rest is history—or a popular radio programs with rather a storied career in one of long-time colleague and radio the top radio markets in the veteran Wendy Snyder is that country where this dynamic duo everyone feels as if they are one has been reunited for a fourof Leff ’s friends. “It’s really funny. hour show every weekday, by the BY ANN MARIE SCHEIDLER ILLUSTRATION BY KIRSTEN ULVE
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“I used to be mad at my parents that they knew about Evanston and kept it from us.” –Bill Leff
same team that originally paired them at The Loop 20 years ago. “Wendy and I couldn’t be more different. We have the same sense of humor, but almost everything else is different. She has said this—so it must be true—that she’s the more hard-edged, masculine of the two of us. I’m the softer, gentler one,” he says. Leff and Snyder tend to plan six to seven hours of material for each of their four-hour shows, often having to play the “hot hand” dealt to them from the headlines of that particular day. “Sometimes you hit radio gold— like today I found this list of ‘Hollywood abnormalities’— actors and actresses who have something funny wrong with them. Those kind of lists never fail. It’s hard to believe that this is a legitimate job.” Leff ’s good fortune isn’t lost on him at all—quick to offer a compliment or to make time for a charity tennis match (the only thing that Leff might leave radio for would be a chance to be a professional tennis player—he loves tennis that much!). One of his favorite radio memories was having the chance to interview someone he had idolized since his childhood, Dick van Dyke. “It was the coolest thing in the world to talk with Dick,” says Leff of the star who just turned 90 years old. “I even made him laugh a couple of times. I made Dick van Dyke laugh. It really doesn’t get any better than that.”