Mike Rhyner Biography
Mike Rhyner (born August 16, 1950) is a radio sports talk personality on KTCK (“The Ticket”) radio in the Dallas area. He helped found the station and is sometimes referred to as the station’s patriarch.
He co-hosts The Hardline, a weekday afternoon show on the station, with Corby Davidson. He was on ESPN’s list of “Sports Radio Personalities of the Year” in 1997, 1998, and 2003. He is a frequent guest on broadcast television.
Mike Rhyner Age
Rhyner was born on August 16, 1950.
Mike Rhyner Education
Rhyner was raised in the Oak Cliff district of Dallas, and he graduated from Kimball High School in 1968. As a boy, he was a fan of the Dallas Texans at the insistence of his father but later would switch his allegiance to the Dallas Cowboys. As a teenager, he played the drums in several local bands from which he said he earned a surprisingly good amount of money.
He briefly attended El Centro College, part of the Dallas County Community College District, but did not graduate. In his early twenties, Rhyner continued to make living playing music, but by his late twenties, he was not getting to where he felt he wanted to be. So, he returned to school to study radio broadcasting at the University of Texas at Arlington.
Mike Rhyner Marriage | Daughter
Rhyner is divorced. He has a daughter named Jordan. Rhyner is a band member of Petty Theft, a Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers tribute band. He also started a Byrds tribute band called the Nyrds.
Mike Rhyner Radio career
Rhyner started at KZEW in 1979 as a news intern and was shortly promoted to the assistant of the program director, Tom Owens. In 1982 at KZEW, he received a letter from the jailed John Hinckley, Jr., attempted presidential assassin, who turned out to be a fan. The letter’s creepiness proved to be a local sensation. In 1986, he left KZEW for WBAP to work in their sports department.
In 1994, Rhyner helped create The Ticket. He was responsible for selecting most of the original lineup, including George Dunham, Craig Miller, and Greg Williams. From 1995 to 2008, Rhyner co-hosted with Williams, and they were “the most dynamic duo in Dallas talk radio”. In 2008, Rhyner had a public falling out with Williams, who left the show. The Dallas Observer in its year-end “best of” round up gave “Greg Williams versus Mike Rhyner” the award for best Dallas drama.
In 2009, CBS Radio attempted to poach Rhyner from KTCK, and Rhyner came close to accepting the new position but instead accepted an increased compensation package from Cumulus Media to stay with The Ticket. On July 3, 2014, Rhyner was inducted into the Texas Radio Hall of Fame. He styles his public persona as “The Old Grey Wolf”, a cantankerous old fart and baseball fan in a football-crazy world. Rocco Pendola, a former coworker, claims that he is difficult to work with.
Mike Rhyner The Ticket
BREAKING UN-NEWS: Mike Rhyner and The Hardline Staying at The Ticket
After months of flirting with 105.3 The Fan and coming this close to leaving the phenomenally successful station he almost single-handedly launched 15 years ago, Rhyner tonight reached an 11th-hour contract agreement with Cumulus Media that will keep him at 1310 AM The Ticket for the foreseeable future.
Multiple times over the last 30 days The Ticket’s founding father had his bags packed, seemingly destined to accept CBS Radio’s overtures and take sidekick Corby Davidson and the wildly popular Hardline to be The Fan’s 3-7 p.m. afternoon drive show. “It was close,” Rhyner told me moments ago. “Very close.”
Rhyner, whose existing Cumulus contract was to expire Feb. 20, wouldn’t elaborate on the specifics of his new deal. He did, however, admit to long nights wrestling with the decision he at one point called “one of the toughest things I’ve faced in my life.”
“The Fan made a really strong run at us,” Rhyner says. “I mean, really strong.” Stalled negotiations with Cumulus and the lure of The Fan’s deep pockets and 100,000-watt FM signal pushed Rhyner to the brink. Loyalty – and a sweetened, buzzer-beating offer – brought him back. “They have a whole lot going for them which we just don’t have,” he says of The Fan.
“But this thing was causing me massive angst and as it played out I saw the reason why. In the end game, I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t turn away from The Ticket. From what we’ve built here. From the fun, we have here. From the guys who I’ve been with for so long. From the great radio that goes on all throughout each and every day.
From this crazy thing, we’ve developed with The Ticket audience, which is unlike anything anywhere in the radio business. You can’t buy those things. It would have just crushed me had it come to that and tonight I’m one thankful S.O.B. that it didn’t.”
With the dramatic departure of original host Greg Williams, the recent divorce from the Dallas Cowboys, long-time assistant program director Mark Friedman’s exit and Rhyner’s looming contract Armageddon, The Ticket has been unsettled recently. Some at the station, sensing what they felt was Rhyner’s inevitable adios and Davidson’s late reluctance to leave with him, even labeled the recent 15th Birthday Party a “last supper” and last weekend’s Ticketstock a “farewell tour”.
This move to secure the station’s signature voice, however, seems to pave the road for The Hardline rating monster into the unchartered PPM future. “The exciting thing is,” Rhyner says, “our work at The Ticket isn’t done. We live to fight another day.”
Mike Rhyner Dallas
Word out of New York is that sports talk radio yakkers Mike and The Mad Dog, once the co-kings of local afternoon drive, are reconciling for a one-night charity event. Mike Francesa and Chris “Mad Dog” Russo’s partnership began in 1989 and ended in an ego-fueled feud nine years later. Francesa went solo on WFAN while Russo moved on to SiriusXM Radio.
The Francesa-Russo reunion is planned for Radio City Music Hall on March 30. It should be mentioned that lots of folks who know the two are predicting old animosities surface and it will never happen. That got me thinking. Once upon a time, the Mike Rhyner-Greg Williams tag team ruled afternoon drive sports talk in Dallas Fort Worth. “The Hardline” went a long way to establishing The Ticket at 1310 on the AM dial.
After almost two years as a lounge act on the fledgling station, Rhyner and Williams moved from the noon time-slot to the main in November 1996. They reigned in the afternoon drive through October 2007 when Williams was fired for erratic behavior that stemmed from substance abuse.
Along the way, the Rhyner-Williams friendship, which had been cemented before the joined forces, frayed. Rhyner still works afternoon drive at the Ticket with Corby Davidson, who slid into Williams’ seat. Williams, who subsequently struck out at KESN-FM (103.3) and 105.3 FM The Fan, lives quietly up the road near the Oklahoma border. When I called each of them this week, they were well aware of the Francesa-Russo reunion, which is getting big play in the New York media.
I asked each if he would be willing to hook up with his former partner for a similar one-shot charity gig. Surely there are enough rubberneckers who would make it profitable for some worthwhile cause. Let’s just say it might be easier to get Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders to run on the same ticket.
Of course, the situation in Dallas is not quite the same as in New York. While Francesa and Russo and Rhyner are still sports talk hosts, Williams is a pariah, stationed on the outside looking in. “I don’t see that happening,” Rhyner said without hesitation when the reunion question was posed. “I just don’t.”
Mike Rhyner The Temple
The Ballpark begins its final week as a baseball temple, fans who stream through will undoubtedly rifle through their memory banks of the special moments they shared there. But, like Rhyner, they will probably find themselves stopping every so often to appreciate the building’s magnificent bones. “I’ll probably go one more time,” he said. “And I’ll probably kiss the side of it when I leave.”
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