Wisconsin’s Morning News host Gene Mueller will retire on Friday, February 25th.
Mueller was in the broadcasting business for an amazing 44 years.
WTMJ’s John Mercure sat down with the Milwaukee icon to reflect on his career.
Listen to the full interview in the player above.
A portion of the conversation was transcribed below, courtesy of eCourt Reporters, Inc.
JOHN MERCURE: So, Gene, 2007, you make the move to WTMJ, a huge change for you. All the cool stuff we’ve been talking about, now you’re coming to the news leader, you’re coming to a different format. Were you nervous?
GENE MUELLER: Scared. Scared you‑know‑what‑less. Yeah, it was ‑‑ you know, I walked by that studio every day to get to our studio, our little closet here in radio city. KTI was an afterthought, whereas, TMJ had the big, beautiful studio back in the old days, down that hallway.
JOHN MERCURE: Yeah.
GENE MUELLER: And I’d see Gordon Hinkley in there and Frank Richardson and Jim Irwin as I was going to our little closet to do our show, and I’d think, boy, you know, if I could ever get on that station someday, that would be something, because I didn’t want to be 60 years old playing the hits. But on the other hand, it just seemed like the opportunity was never going to happen. And I got to know a lot of the AM people, you know, we all did.
JOHN MERCURE: Yeah.
GENE MUELLER: You worked in TV here, too. So, Frank Richardson and I wound up being drinking buddies. And I got to know Jim Irwin and spend time with him and stay in touch with him after retirement. But to come down the hall and actually sit in that studio and have to execute Wisconsin’s morning news, thank God for John Jagler and a good strong partner in the big chair, because I was the sidecar at the time. I did the news with him, and we did the show together, but he made the landing a lot softer.
JOHN MERCURE: So, now 15 years you’ve been in that chair, a front row seat to history to a lot of things. What’s that been like?
GENE MUELLER: You know the feeling. I mean, you plan a show, you know what you’re going to do, and all of a sudden things change, things happen. And you’ve done a masterful job of it with everything that goes on in the afternoon. You never know what’s going to force your hand and make you suddenly be an expert on something you knew nothing about: Sikh Temple shooting; the fire, I remember you guys that afternoon at the church downtown. All those things that suddenly put you on the spot, and you just hope that you do the job and stay in the moment and try not to get in the way of the story to bring out the best in the other people. And you get guests on that can tell the story that you can’t. All you can do is, you know, get the right pieces in the right place.
But it was a different kind of radio, what I thought I could do, but I wasn’t sure. I never felt comfortable in that studio. I always used the analogy that ‑‑ and I know you grew up in Green Bay and maybe you had relatives like this too, there was always that one aunt and uncle that had the immaculate house that had plastic on the furniture in the living room that you never sat in. That’s what this always felt like to me, like I was in my Aunt Helen’s living room and I better not spill anything, and I better not, you know, sully the temple, because that’s the stain Gene put on the carpet; well, that’s the mistake Gene made on TMJ and it screwed the whole thing after 80 years, 90‑year legacy. That was always the feeling. I never felt like my feet were reaching the floor. I didn’t feel like I was big enough for the chair.
JOHN MERCURE: I was fortunate enough to be with you at the Super Bowl in 2011, the Rodgers Super Bowl. I think our seats actually straddled the 50-yard line.
GENE MUELLER: We were up there, but we were there.
JOHN MERCURE: Yeah, as a lifelong Packer fan, we talked about Chester Marcol earlier, what was that Super Bowl like?
GENE MUELLER: Well, we worked so hard going up to that moment, and you never complain about your job, and I never would, because we said and did things and saw things at radio row and talked to people that we never thought we would see, but ‑‑ on very little sleep, but at the end of it all, we knew that we’d be going to the game and we wouldn’t have to work the game, that we could just go there as fans. And any other chance to go to the Super Bowl from that time wasn’t going to include that. So, return to the Super Bowl as much as I wanted as a Packers fan, I knew we’re probably going to have to come home like all the other schlubs on the radio row, because so many of them go but they never get to stay. We got to stay, that’s the kind of company this was.
So, yeah, again, you’re a lifelong Packers fan, too. I mean, I fought back tears to be there in the moment, to watch the confetti drop.
JOHN MERCURE: Yeah, for sure.
GENE MUELLER: And to be able to share that, then only ‑‑ my only regret was I couldn’t have my family there, but, you know, can only ask for so much. The fact we were in the building watching a Super Bowl, man, that’s one you’re going to remember on the death bed.
JOHN MERCURE: Everybody asks everybody, what’s the best interview you’ve done? Who’s the coolest person you’ve talked to? How about the worst interview? Is there somebody that stands out that, man, that was really rough?
GENE MUELLER: Peter Marshall, remember him from Hollywood Squares?
JOHN MERCURE: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
GENE MUELLER: He was here doing dinner theater, and I think he was still doing Hollywood Squares at the time, but he was not in a good place, he didn’t want to be on a morning show on an FM top 40 station at seven in the morning. And he didn’t exactly say that, but you could just, you know, take the temperature. But when the mic went on, he was great, he was fabulous, and the light went on and he turned on and the light went off and he went off, but he would tell us later that he wasn’t feeling good. He was really sick that day, but he gutted it out. He still gave us a great interview, but the stuff in between off the air was kind of “mmm.”
There were other moments, too, where we’d get with people, like on satellite, and they said things off the air before we got them on where you knew they didn’t want to be there, and then you gotta be Mr. Excitement, inside you know they don’t want to be talking to you from Milwaukee, but those were probably the worst moments.