Howard Stern has the No. 1 daily syndicated radio show in the world, he is the author of the phenomenal best-selling books Private Parts (that also was made into a hit movie) and Miss America. As a pioneer in talk radio for almost 20 years, Stern has been redefining the standards of broadcast entertainment. "I always resented the label of 'shock jock' that the press came up with for me," Howard Stern has said, "because I never intentionally set out to shock anybody. What I intentionally set out to do was to talk just as I talk off the air, to talk the way guys talk sitting around a bar." Whether viciously attacking his own employers, discussing graphic details of his own and others' sex lives, or humiliating studio guest or on-air callers, he has been, from any viewpoint, relentlessly controversial and undeniably successful.
Howard Allan Stern was born on Jan. 12, 1954 in Jackson Heights, NY. His first radio experience was at Boston University, where he volunteered at the college radio station. Along with several other students, he created an on-air show called the King Schmaltz Bagel Hour, a takeoff on the popular King Biscuit Flour Hour. Predicting his penchant for controversy, the show was canceled after its first broadcast, which included the comedy sketch "Name That Sin," a game show where contestants confessed their worst sins. Stern graduated in 1976 with a 3.8 grade-point average and a bachelor's degree in communications. During his first paying radio gig, at an understaffed 3,000-watt station in Briarcliff Manor, New York, "it dawned on me that I would never make it as a straight deejay," Stern told James S. Kunen in an interview for People (10/22/84), "so I started to mess around. It was unheard-of to mix talking on the phone with playing music. It was outrageous, It was blasphemy."
The six-foot four-inch Howard Stern "sounds like an animated Alan Alda," according to Richard Harrington of the Washington Post (Oct. 28, 1993), but his "shoulder-length black mane makes him look like a cross between Joey Ramone and Cousin It."
Described by his soon to be ex-wife, Alison, as a "very caring father," he has 3 daughters; Emily, Debra, and Ashley Jade.
Stern has often claimed to be more comfortable with his radio personality than his true self. "When I'm on the radio," he told Rick Marin of Rolling Stone, "I can be exactly what I am and say exactly what I feel. I really feel I'm role playing in real life. But I can get in the radio and be who I feel I am inside. In real life, I sit and hold back all the time. I hate that. But you can't function in real life if you go around telling people what you think."
