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[Dec. 20th, 2020|07:49 pm] |
You can take the girl out of Vermont, but you never really take Vermont out of the girl. Especially if the girl was Michael Lisabeth Dahl.
Michael was the middle of three girls born to Leslie and Georgia Ann Dahl. They were well known in the town of Stowe VT, because they were, the Dahl girls- who baffled every new teacher by virtue of their names. Noone really expects Charlie Dahl to be a tall girl with big curly hair and blue eyes, Michael Dahl to be a small girl with dark features or Teddy Dahl to be the homecoming queen. But that was how the Dahl girls were. All three of them, as different as night and day. Smart and athletic, driven and ambitious, but all in the own way. Mikey's a middle child in every sense of the word: she gets lost in her own head, trying to make sure that everyone around her is okay. She talks, a lot, because if she didn't, she'd get lost in the whirlwind that was her siblings. She alterately loves and hates the girls she's bound to by virtue of birth.
High school went well for Mikey. She played golf and lacrosse (despite her small stature, she was fast and hit hard, all training from being a middle child). She did well in school. She fell in love with Robbie, a boy who at the time was a bit too precious for words. And its where she found her passion for radio.
As long as she could remember, Michael's been facinated with the radio. When she wasn't at school, she was listening to the radio- spending long nights just listening. It didn't help that her uncle Steve was a big name in radio in Chicago. Even before there were podcasts available, she had tapes - hours and hours of tape - all of her uncle so she could learn her craft from the best. At the high school they had a tv/radio production class, which Michael took as soon as she was able. From the moment she set foot in that class Michael knew this was not only what she wanted to do, but what she was made for. She was a little girl with a big voice and she used it to her advantage.
All those years listening to Uncle Steve and working on her show at SHS worked. She got in to Rutgers and majored in Journalism/Media Studies. She did well at Rutgers, not only making friends like Jamie Langston, but working on the radio. All four years at Rutgers, Michael was either behind the mic or running the board three or four days a week. She was good at what she did and she knew it.
After college, Michael knew it was time for her to spread her wings. She moved to Chicago to work with her Uncle Steve at WCKG. At the time the format was FM talk, something she loved. While she was in Chicago, she was mostly behind the scenes, working predomantly with her cousin Matt on his radio show.
She thought she was fine, that she had the situation under control... until the station changed format. Just as she was making close friends, starting to date, really settling in- it was gone. Everyone at the station was let go (except for her Uncle Steve, who with 30 years under his belt in Chicago broadcasting, moved to another station owned by CBS radio and then saying fuck it all and podcasting exclusively) and it was hard. Should she turn tail and go home? Should she try and fight to get another job, if one should come open, knowing that there were people with more experience gunning right along with her? So she talked to her uncle and her cousin Matt.
Uncle Steve thought the best idea would be for her to find a smaller market- not tiny small, but not Chicago. Matt thought it would be funny to just throw a dart at the map and pick that way... the dart hit St Louis- even if she was aiming for the west coast because - as Matt likes to remind her, she throws like a girl. So she packed her bags and headed west.
She got a job doing promotions at a radio station in St Louis, and settled down. Her promotions gig turned into the occasional airshift, which turned into her doing the afternoon drive for Z107.7. Michael loved her job... loved may've been an understatement. Mikey was doing exactly what she'd always dreamed of doing. Everything was falling into place.
That lasted two and a half years. Monday December 20, 2010 was a turning point for Mikey... because she was let go. Clear Channel was consolodating - the same guy that did the morning show in Tulsa was going to be pre-taping her show.... rather, the time slot that had been her show starting January 17th. Her show was over as of 7pm Monday night.
Just when they say you can't go home again, here she was. Packing her life into boxes and crates and getting ready to move back to Stowe VT. Back into the room she grew up in. Twenty eight, almost twenty nine, and starting over. |
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