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Book Home  Books Information Paul Harvey
Paul Harvey
Paul Harvey Aurandt (born September 4, 1918), better known as Paul Harvey, is an American radio broadcaster for the ABC Radio Networks. He broadcasts a monologue in the morning (5 minutes) and at noon (15 minutes) Monday through Friday and at noon on Saturday. His shows are mostly news and commentary as well as his famous "The Rest of the Story" segment. His listening audience is estimated at 22 million people a week. Paul Harvey likes to say that he was raised in radio newsrooms.
Career
Harvey was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Harvey made radio sets as a boy. In 1933, at a high school teacher’s suggestion, he started working at KVOO/Tulsa. There he helped clean up and eventually was allowed to fill in on the air, reading commercials and news.
Later, while attending the University of Tulsa, he continued working at KVOO as an announcer, and later as a program director. Harvey spent three years as a station manager for a local station in Salina, Kansas. From there, he moved to a news casting job at KOMA-AM in Oklahoma City, then moved on to KXOK-AM, in St. Louis, where he was Director of Special Events as well as working as a roving reporter.
In 1940, Harvey moved to Hawaii to cover the U.S. Navy as it concentrated its fleet in the Pacific. He was returning to the United States from assignment in Hawaii when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Harvey then enlisted in the Army Air Corps, where he served until 1944. According to his official Army Air Corps Military Personnel Record, his entire term in the military lasted from December 2, 1943 to March 15, 1944 - about 14 weeks.
(The November 7, 1978, issue of Esquire magazine has an exposé of sorts on Harvey, including how he came to drop his last name of Aurandt: Briefly, he stole an airplane and was discharged from the Army Air Corps on Section 8 [mental illness] charges.)
After leaving military service, Harvey moved to Chicago, where in June 1944, he began broadcasting from the ABC affiliate WENR-AM. He quickly became the most popular newscaster in Chicago.
In 1945, he began hosting the postwar employment program Jobs for G.I. Joe on ABC affiliate WENR-AM.
In 1946, Harvey added "The Rest of the Story" segments to his newscasts, which eventually became its own series in 1976.
In 1951, the ABC Radio Networks carried Paul Harvey's show News and Comment coast-to-coast and it has continued ever since.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was a televised, five-minute version of the show that local stations could insert into their noon news programs.
On May 10, 1976, ABC Radio Networks spun off The Rest of the Story as a separate series which provided endless surprises as Harvey dug into the stories behind the stories of famous events people. Harvey's son, a concert pianist, helped write the show.
In 2001, Harvey was off the air after damaging his vocal cords, returning in late August, 2001.
Paul Harvey News has been called the "largest one-man network in the world", as it is carried on broadcast civilian radio stations, 400 Armed Forces Network stations around the world, 100 stations and 300 newspapers.
His broadcasts and newspaper columns have been reprinted in the Congressional Record more than those of any other commentator.
Harvey's News and Comment is streamed on the World Wide Web twice a day.
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