Mary Margaret McBride: The Lady of the Radio
Mary Margaret McBride illustrated the exact definition of "determination". She was resilient, persuasive, and became a leader without even realizing, at first. Many know her as a writer and a journalist, but others remember her as the "First Lady of the Radio".
Mary Margaret attended public schools in her hometown until 1910 when her great-aunt Albina paid for her to study at William Woods in Fulton, Missouri. Her great-aunt stopped paying for tuition after McBride informed her that she wanted to be a writer.
Resilient to give up, she paid her own way through school. McBride got a part-time job at the local newspaper, the Paris Mercury. She gained practical experience covering a wide variety of events, including courthouse proceedings, baby contests, and social events.
Tom Bodine, the paper’s editor, encouraged her to get a college education, and after a few months she left town and enrolled at the University of Missouri in 1916. She worked at night and went to school during the day. After two and a half years of surviving on ten dollars a week, McBride’s hard work paid off and she received a journalism degree in 1918.
She was in and out of work while simultaneously collaborating and writing books under pseudonyms. But in 1934, she auditioned for a woman’s program on radio station WOR and finally found her calling.
McBride was hired to portray herself on the air as Martha Deane, a fictional grandmother with a large family whose details she had to memorize. In less than three weeks, she came clean about the persona she took on. What easily could have been expected as a career ender, turned into her career maker. Her listeners loved her honesty, candidness, and just her.
She had weekly radio shows and interviewed celebrities from politics, entertainment, and the arts without a script and no prior knowledge to whom she would be interviewing. She displayed great skill and courage in each show she conducted.
Starting in the 1940s, she also began to bring Black figures onto the show, taking advantage of the anonymizing quality of radio to let her guests start speaking before her listeners would recognize the race of the speaker, and understand that what they had to say was important and of value, no matter the color of their skin. This was an important forerunner for talk radio and television talk show personalities.
On May 31, 1944, McBride celebrated her tenth anniversary on the air with a celebration at Madison Square Garden in New York. McBride was reported worried that no one would attend. However, more than eighteen thousand women and men packed the arena to celebrate her, while millions more listened at home. At this event, Eleanor Roosevelt introduced McBride, saying, “I am always happy when a woman succeeds, but when a woman succeeds superlatively, she’s an inspiration to all other women.”
She retired in 1954, but continued to broadcast from her living room. After a long illness, Mary Margaret McBride died at her home in New York, on April 7, 1976.
Related Links
Historic Missourians Mary Margaret McBride
"America's First Lady of Radio" Mary Margaret McBride
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