DA N M C D O W E LL
radio personality
DAN MCDOWELL If you’re a P1, you already know Dan McDowell. But in case you don’t listen to The Ticket, a Dallas sports-talk radio station, he’s one of the hosts of BaD Radio. The midday program allows McDowell to talk sports as a career—and it also gives him tremendous flexibility as a father. While some parents head to work before the sun is up and arrive home with barely enough time to kiss their kids goodnight, McDowell’s schedule is different. He typically leaves his Southlake home mid-morning and returns home well before dinnertime, leaving plenty of family time with his wife, Kathy, and their two daughters: Eden (12) and Eva (14). “I have an awesome schedule that most people don’t have. A real guy with a real job has to be at work,” he jokes. Though you could classify McDowell as a local celeb (he has more than 48,000 Twitter followers), his daughters don’t think anything of it. “I don’t know if they’ve seen me do a radio show,” says McDowell. “I’m not positive they know exactly what I do.” While he’s a funny guy to listeners, to his daughters, he’s Dad. He’s the guy they hang out with on Sunday nights for their weekly “Star Trek” viewing, and he’s the one they swim with every day in the summer. That’s what McDowell loves most about fatherhood—just being with his girls. “When they were little, I’d crawl around the room with them,” he says. “I love just hanging out.” McDowell never expected he’d enjoy fatherhood so much. In fact, if his wife had said she didn’t want kids when they got married, he would have been on board with it. “I was never like, ‘I love kids and can’t wait to have kids,’” he says. “I still don’t really love kids. I just love two kids. I can’t imagine life without them.” With his daughters entering their teenage years, McDowell acknowledges the pace of life has picked up. There’s school, homework, sports and friends to juggle, but he doesn’t mind. “Every age they are seems to be my favorite,” he says. “I just really love this era. Living life is fun.”
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