Lending a voice to ‘theater of the mind’: Radio personality Riemer grew up, got his start in Auburn

Published 5:12 pm Wednesday, November 2, 2011

For more than 30 years, Marty Riemer has brought a smooth, comfortable and steady voice to radio stations throughout the Puget Sound.

Riemer began his on-air career as a precocious teenager on Green River Community College’s KGRG 89.9 FM. He has gone on to sustain a presence as a popular personality on local stations, including stints at KZOK, KJR, KXRX and most recently, KMTT The Mountain 103.7 FM, where he occupies the 2-6 p.m. drive-time slot.

Along the way, Riemer has witnessed the changing face of the medium, from the decline of AM radio’s popularity in the 1970s and the ascension of the FM band, to radio’s struggle with staying relevant and profitable in these days of Internet podcasting and streaming.

He also has been a part of history. He is credited as being the one who broke the news of Kurt Cobain’s suicide in 1994.

And it all started in Auburn, where Riemer grew up and later, graduated from high school in 1980.

Riemer first caught the radio bug at age 13.

“We were taking a trip to the ocean, and we stopped to visit a friend of the family who worked for KGHO in Grays Harbor,” he said. “It was a weekend, and he was sitting all by himself, playing vinyl.”

Riemer grew interested and begged off the trip to the shore, preferring to hang out at the radio station.

“From that point on, I was on fire,” he said. “I’ve tried to put together why I found radio so fascinating, and the best I can come up with is that it is theater of the mind. It’s why books are better than movies. You can fill in the picture much better with your mind than some Hollywood producer can.”

Riemer set out to find a way to get on the air. He discovered a local radio station down the street from where he lived.

Riemer announced his intentions to his father, a Boeing engineer, who urged his son to obtain his first-class license with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) before getting in front of the mic.

“He always had this evil plan that I would follow in his footsteps and become an engineer,” Riemer said. “And he came up with this plan.”

Riemer took his advice and spent the better part of a summer studying and taking FCC exams.

“You needed a third-class license to be on the air,” Riemer explained. “They had a second-class license if you wanted to be an engineer at a radio station and a first-class license if you wanted to be an engineer at a TV station. And the tests for the classes were progressively more difficult, with intense electronic, mathematics and algebra for the first-class license.

“My dad thought that would help me get over this radio kick in no time, and in the process, I’d have to learn all this engineering stuff and have a leg up in college,” Riemer said.

‘You’re insane’

After passing the first-class exam and earning his license, Riemer walked into KGRG and asked for a weekend spot at the station.

“Nobody there had a first-class license,” Riemer said. “When I told them I had one, they said, ‘You’re insane,’ and gave me a spot.

“It was a shrewd little strategy on my dad’s part to get me to learn all this highfaluting math and science.”

Although radio continued to be his focus, Riemer eventually received his master’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Washington.

After working at KGRG for four years, he began attending the UW where he worked at KCMU.

In 1982, Riemer gave up his amateur DJ status and got his first paying gig at Seattle rock station KZOK. “It was Sunday morning, 6 to noon,” he said. “I was in heaven.”

After four years there, Riemer got the chance to fulfill a childhood dream when he was picked up by another Seattle station, KJR.

“When I was growing up in Auburn, KJR was the mammoth, powerhouse AM station,” he said. “And when I was growing up, I told myself, ‘Come hell or high water, I am going to get a job at KJR.’

“To have worked in that facility, where so much radio history took place, was an incredible experience.”

In the early 1990s, Riemer moved to KXRX, where he broke the news of Cobain’s death. While working the morning shift, Riemer received a phone call from a man who worked for a local electrical contractor.

“One of their guys was at Cobain’s house. They found a body and it looked like Cobain had committed suicide,” he said. “And we said, ‘Thank you very much, sir. Why don’t you go back to your crack factory?’ “

After hanging up on the caller, Riemer said the man persisted, calling back two more times before his radio staff called Seattle police, who confirmed they had dispatched a cruiser to the Cobain residence.

“When we heard that part of the story was true, coupled with the amount of detail this guy had given us (on the phone), we figured this story might be true,” Riemer said.

Riemer and the station decided to go on the air to announce that the Nirvana frontman had committed suicide.

“And that’s all we said,” he added.

“Because of the changes to the media, something like that would never happen again,” Riemer added. “Something like that now would break on Twitter. It wouldn’t break on the radio.”

In 1997, after a stint working outside radio as an electrical engineer and starting up his own video production company, Twisted Scholar, Riemer accepted an offer from KMTT to return to the air.

“The only reason I was interested in the Mountain is because while I was setting up my own business, I was listening to the station all the time,” he said. “I was becoming a radio junkie again.

“In radio, you rarely have an opportunity to work at a radio station you would listen to,” he added. “This station is so in my wheelhouse.”

In 2009, Riemer’s contract wasn’t renewed with KMTT, but he would return after a year. He was asked to come back because of the popularity of his podcast and the demand from his listeners.

And he’s still on the air, living out his dream.

“I’ve just been endlessly fascinated with the idea of sitting in this room and speaking with the faceless masses,” he said. “It’s really kind of a weird disconnect that I’m sitting here all by myself, and yet people are listening to me in Granite Falls and places I don’t even know exist. I find that endlessly fascinating, the idea of theater of the mind.”