Chicago radio personality Judy Markey was never embarrassed to be real on air, whether sharing a personal story or pointing at something silly she’d done.
Like the time she drove away from a gas station with the pump still in her gas tank.
Sharing such tales with charm and ease was part of the magic she brought to the “Kathy and Judy Show” alongside her co-host and close friend Kathy O’Malley.
The groundbreaking show became the first in Chicago radio history hosted by women in a heavily male-dominated industry. It allowed a largely female audience to be seen and heard over shared joys and struggles — mundane and extraordinary — in a sisterhood of sorts known as “The Girlfriends.”
A good number of male listeners also considered themselves part of the group.
Their weekday show aired on WGN-720 from 1989 to 2009 and was picked up again in 2013 for a four-year run on weekends.
Ms. Markey, who suffered a degenerative neurological disorder, died Friday in Switzerland where she chose a voluntary assisted death.
She was 82 and had no fear in her last months and moments, said her husband, Tom Collinger.
Before passing, she had a couple bites of a Snickers and said she had a headache.
“I said ‘Do you want some Advil? And she said ‘I kind of want something a little stronger,'” recalled Collinger, noting that her last joke landed with everyone in the room.
“She had a life that exceeded all her expectations. In the end she was comforting others,” said Collinger, professor emeritus of Northwestern Univeristy.
The “Kathy and Judy Show” was marked by genuine, relatable silliness and laughter. It included segments like “Sex Thursday” where listeners would share personal experiences.
Ms. Markey created an anonymous method for people to call in and share intimate things. Men were called “Vince,” and women were called “Rhonda.”
During their “Speak your Piece” segment, listeners called to vent and share whatever was on their minds.
There was the annual “Merry Medical Christmas Letters” in which the duo read family newsletters submitted by listeners that, instead of updates on vacations and newborns, were hilariously filled with TMI level details of surgeries, medical diagnoses and bodily ailments of the past year.
One radio moment that still makes fans smile occurred when Ms. Markey shared her annoyance that a new dishwasher delivered to her house came with a hideous turquoise trim. After some “They didn’t!” and “They did!” the listener calls began pouring in, and it was quickly established that the turquoise was actually just plastic covering to protect the finish that could be peeled off.
Ms. Markey was incredulous at first. It made for great radio.
The show could just as easily veer toward serious topics, like the time around the turn of the century when a conservative group declared all women who had abortions suffered mental health issues afterward.
“We didn’t feel that was entirely accurate,” O’Malley recalled on WGN-720 following Ms. Markey’s death. “And we asked for women to call who had had an abortion and to say whether or not that was true for them, and the first person to say ‘I have had an abortion’ was Judy Markey, which I thought was remarkably brave and powerful, and she opened the floodgates. The lines lit up with women who said ‘I have had an abortion and I’m OK’ and ‘I have had an abortion and I haven’t sunk into depression’ … we couldn’t take all the calls. It was really remarkable.”
She and Ms. Markey spoke about things that others might shy away from, “but why not talk about them because they were real life, and that was as much Judy as the wacky stuff,” O’Malley told the Sun-Times.
“We were not bull—-. We said things that were true and things other people didn’t want to say,” O’Malley said. “I loved her so much. She was something else.”
The show was immensely popular. The duo held annual fan conventions at the Hilton Hotel on Michigan Avenue.
A poem O’Malley posted on social media after the show went off air for good drew more than 166,000 likes in just five days, according to former Sun-Times media columnist Robert Feder.
“Our listeners were the best part of our show,” O’Malley said.
Ms. Markey was born Feb. 18, 1944, in Cleveland to Johnny and Lois Lindheim. Her parents ran a record store and a dance hall before moving to Beverly Hills, Calif., when Ms. Markey was 13.
Ms. Markey studied journalism at Northwestern University and worked in administrative positions for an advertising agency and a book publisher in New York before she married her first husband, Tom Markey. She traveled with him to Europe, where the couple lived in several countries as her husband worked as an executive with Abbott Labs.
When the couple returned to the Chicago area, Ms. Markey had two small children and dreams of a new career. They later divorced.
“I remember we were driving in a snowstorm in Wilmette, and I told her I wanted to be an interior designer and she told me she wanted to be a writer,” recalled her good friend Chris Paschen.
Ms. Markey successfully pitched a few ideas to magazines like Cosmopolitan and Glamour and gained momentum as a writer. She then started a steady gig writing slice-of-life columns for the Sun-Times. Meanwhile, O’Malley was working as a columnist at the Chicago Tribune.
Ms. Markey and O’Malley met in the ’80s when the now-dissolved Chicago City Ballet cast media personalities to play the wicked stepmother in their Thanksgiving productions of “Cinderella.” Each had a turn in the role. They met during rehearsals and hit it off immediately.
Each had also served as an occasional guest on WGN radio programs.
In 1989, WGN’s program director Lorna Gladstone thought their combined viewpoints and wit could make something special on the radio. Gladstone teamed them on air for the first time in a low-stakes test run during a time slot that overlapped the Super Bowl.
Their foot was in the door. They kicked it open.
It was a coincidence that Ms. Markey died a day before Illinois’ new “medical aid in dying” law went into effect, allowing terminally ill adults to seek life-ending medication from doctors.
Ms. Markey, who split time between Highland Park and Tucson in recent years, hoped her death would add to and broaden the conversation surrounding a person’s right to choose to die, her husband said.
In addition to her husband, Ms. Markey is survived by her daughter, Erin Markey; son Adam Markey; stepson Zach Collinger; stepdaughter Kate Collinger Buxton; son-in-law Pat Buxton; and two grandchildren.
A private celebration of life will be held Thursday. It will be live streamed at 11 a.m. and will be preceded by a short video at 10:45 a.m. A link to the live stream can be found at everloved.com, as well as below: