1010 WINS Radio Legend John Montone Retires After Decades-Long Career
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- John Montone is dropping the mic.
The 1010 WINS radio legend is calling it a career after decades of covering New York.
"It's a very emotional day for me," Montone said Thursday.
He's been voice of New York for so many years.
"Today is the day that I retire," he said.
Montone has telling stories from the streets with a New York swagger and also making guest appearances here on CBS2, but now he's is hanging up his microphone and retiring a voice that's as distinctive as the city itself.
"You remember, John, there was always a time in radio where everybody had to have those great pipes, the great voice, and you are the antithesis of that," CBS2's Dick Brennan said.
"Well, I think the voice breaks through. I agree with you when you think about the voices of the '50s and the 1960s, the "real radio voices" and "This is the news." I never wanted to be like that. I was much more conversational," Montone said.
Montone says radio has an intimacy that no other medium can match, and now he will pass the baton to others, opting himself for fishing and pickleball.
"You know, they say that ballplayers who retire, they look at the other guys and how they're playing the game, do you think, like, when you're sitting there on LBI, you're gonna be like, 'ah, I would've done that story that way,'" Brennan said.
"I do that already," Montone said, laughing. "Once in a while, I'll look up and say, 'Did he really say that? That's ridiculous.' I do that. Not when you're on, Dick."
Montone says it's New Yorkers who made him what he is, and his microphone was their megaphone.
"When people came up to me on the street, the first thing they saw was the microphone and then maybe they knew it was me, and I always said to them what I'll say now -- 'Thank you for listening,'" Montone said.
Montone says he will continue to do a Facebook Live show at 8:05 a.m. every day.