January 10, 2024
Transparency
As I replied to her Monday morning message saying she’d respond to my questionnaire via audio, I included. “A lot i could have taken from your book…but I wanted it from you,” as it had been quite some time since we had messaged one another. Over the past couple years, I had turned away from things I truly enjoy and listening to her flamboyant talk had gone to the wayside like many other things including friendships.
Healing over a multitude of health and personal issues had me see this in myself and I knew I needed to change once again to regain my happiness. “I missed times like last night. Tuning in to your show. But finding happiness again in the things I really enjoy is becoming grand! Great show, Heidi,” I included.
With that said lets ‘Meet: Heidi Harris,’ radio talk show host.
It was late 2015 or early 2016 when our paths first crossed, I had seen Heidi as a commentator on one of those cable news network’s political talk shows hosted by someone, I no long care to mentions name. The host and I were friends at the time but I’ve long since severed ties and communications with her. But that’s another story.
Heidi was on in support of 45, prior to the ’16 primary election, a man whom I’d never vote for. Yet she wasn’t the typical supporter. She spoke truth to the man’s morals and behavioral traits or lack of them in this case. Refreshing I thought, even if she was supporting him.
After the shows airing, I tweeted her. “Not bad for a conservative.” We later became friends.
GOD:
Heidi’s a Christian in every sense of the word and attributes her relationship with God as the means for her twenty plus year marriage. “Our marriage is based on God,” she begins, “I picked a good guy. A good man. He’s a man of integrity. I knew him fourteen years before I married him.”
“I picked a man of God who considers what God says more important than what I have to say, and I feel the same way. Everything we decide, we decide as a couple,” she continues. “We decide whether it’s God’s plan for our lives. The way we treat each other. The importance we give our marriage. There are things I have not done in my career. because my marriage was more important. You can’t make decisions based on what other people want for you.”
But when it comes to the band, Heidi’s in my wagon, as she opines. “I don’t like the band and the worship music. I hate worship music. I’m a Christian, I hate worship music. I’m using the word hate here. I go to a small church; I don’t like it when we do it at my church. I tolerate it. I want to be taught something.”
The Mob:
One of the first questions I had asked Heidi about was, who has been her craziest guest. “I’ve had some doozies,” she aimed. “I’ve had people, everything from mobsters, and hookers, politicians all those kinds of people on the show over the course of my career. I had a guy one time that was a drone protester. He walked into the studio looking like central casting. Backpack, Birkenstock and he was against nuclear weapons, drones this and that and the other. We had a great conversation and I just let him bury himself. A real nice guy, you don’t have to beat people up. But it was funny to talk to him and at the end of the conversation he said ‘that went really well,’ and I said, “ha ha ha yes it did.”
And Snakes:
Heidi says, a lot of people, in her younger years, had told her she should consider talk radio as a future because she always had an opinion and loved to read. “My mom even said have you ever listened to Rush Limbaugh, and I said no. She said, ‘you sound just like him.’ She meant politically obviously. I was a conservative even before I heard of Rush Limbaugh,” she initiated.
“Bruce Williams was one of the first I’d listen to. He was fantastic! I was actually on his show once, that was kind of funny. I called him because I had a reptile, I was thinking of selling on consignment and Bruce Williams seemed to be the expert on everything. I called to see whether he thought I should sell it on consignment or sell it to somebody directly.”
“I knew nothing about talk radio at that time, but I knew enough to know that if I called about a snake I’d probably get to the top of the line as opposed to people calling about their landlord or whatever. And that’s what happened, they put me right on,” she ends laughingly.
The Rest of The Story:
Heidi has been on the airwaves for twenty-six plus years now, with many of them from her hometown station KXNT Las Vegas.
She began her career when a friend, that knew someone that ran a local station, took her to meet her and after an hour or so meeting, Heidi says the woman, “after realizing she could put a sentence together, put me on in the middle of the night for free. I was worth every dime.” She’d go on to do this for nine months from midnight to 1 AM.
From there she moved over to KXNT. As the story goes, Heidi took her tape (a promo on cassette) over to the station along with her resume. Yet she sat in her car a half an hour while an ‘Angel and the Devil’ sat on her shoulders bickering back and forth as to whether to take it up or not.
Finally deciding to take her tape in and drop it off but hadn’t heard anything. “About a month later,” Heidi tells me, “I get a phone call from the new program director (the station was in the process of change when she originally dropped her tape off) Gavin Spittle.” He told her he was going through a box of tapes and came across hers and said ‘oh local girl’ this ought to be good for a laugh. And after listening for twenty minutes, he called her. Heidi started by filling in and had a weekend show, then partnered with a guy for five years during a weekday show, before parting ways for the station across the street, KDON.
Years later, KDON would part ways with her, and she’d move on to Los Angeles commuting to and from her home in Las Vegas before eventually returning to KXNT. Citing the need to spend more time with her husband as her reasoning, Heidi airs one night a week now on 97.1 Saint Louis on Sunday evening and also has a podcast accessible from her website. I’ll leave contact links below.
Top Guest:
Through the years, she’s had POTUS 45 on air. Once from the ‘The Apprentice’ days and the other during an election. She said before she picked up the phone, she though ‘Here we go. He’s probably going to be a pompous butthead and he couldn’t have been nicer. The two times I’ve talked to him, he’s been nothing but nice. People who know him, say that about him. That he is really very nice personally. He’s been nothing but nice when I’ve talked to him.”
Television:
Heidi’s been on the cable talk show circuit for years appearing hundreds of times on various networks and shows as a commentator or political pundit. Her first appearance was slated to be on Sean Hannity; however, she was with her terminally ill father who had cancer. Hannity, she says, called her during a commercial break and told her she was doing the ‘right thing’ by being by his side. Her father passed a couple weeks later.
A year later, she made her first appearance on the same Sean Hannity show. This was the beginning of her doing, as she says, ‘a lot’ of FOX Weekend Live appearances. One of the producers at Fox, later moved over to MSNBC and he called her.
“You may say ‘Oh My Gosh.’ I can’t believe you’d do MSNBC,” she told me. “But I’ve got to be honest with you, the people at MSNBC were nicer to me, well as nice the people at FOX. Everybody treated me great. Except for one person and that’s Joy Reid, who’s a witch to everybody. That’s just how she is. Everybody else Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz all these people treated me great. Every one of them. I had a real great relationship with Ed Schultz especially. I did his show when he came out to Vegas. He was on mine, I liked him very much. Chris Matthews was nothing but nice to me,” even the makeup people were nice, Heidi added.
Finishing up, she says it was “actually more fun doing MSNBC than FOX, to be honest, because if you’re on FOX you’re sitting there saying, OK ‘Obama sucks’ OK, OK uh huh, uh huh. Where on MSNBC you’re like ‘put’em up, put’em up. It was fun being the only person saying what I was saying. You have to learn to be concise. You have to learn you may get ten seconds. You may be on there; three minutes you may get one good one liner in there and that may be all you do. And that’s OK.”
Las Vegas:
Many of you know, I’ve never been to Vegas. Lake Tahoe and Reno, yes, because of a drive home from Northern California. That route is simply amazing. And Lake Tahoe is gorgeous.
Never having been there, maybe soon after a friend is well enough to travel, I had to ask her what’s to see that would make it a special trip. It took Heidi no time at all to mention a helicopter ride to the Grand Canyon and if we do it at the end of the day, they’ll fly us over the strip, and we’d see the strip lights. She, also, recommended Red Rock.
Author:
Heidi has written two books, the first ‘Cocktail Waitress Wisdom’ which was later followed by ‘Don’t Pat Me on the Head.’ Both of which are available through Amazon and make good reads. I’ve read them and enjoyed them immensely. The latter being sent as an autographed gift from Heidi upon its release in 2018.
Surprise:
Heidi, not once in all the years did, I ever mention I knew. But now all me readers will too. It’s time for ‘Family Feud.’ I’m not sure who won the battle here, whether it was my ‘Angel or the Devil’ who made me add this. It just appeared as a fun ending!
About Me:
First and foremost, I’d like to say ‘thank you’ Heidi for the well wishes included in your reply and on air shoutout this past Sunday while doing your show. Being seen and cared about is the real meaning of any friendship. And yes, my friend, I’m glad I found you again on ‘X.’ as I thought Elon had sent you to ‘X-jail’ forever.
I found no ‘joy’ in ‘reid’ing’ myself. That book is indeed ‘fracture’d’ and meaningless; as it passed right on by when it was meant to meet, yet never saying as much as hi and giving credit somewhere else. The new book is how I found you and happiness ensued but those that hate always will. Someday I’ll write that story too.
Faith and political leaders be damned if they can’t reach all by crossing the isle and seeing good in everyone regardless of who they vote for or their religious beliefs. This is why our friendship is special. Thanks for your time and the interview, Heidi. An if we do make the trip out west, I’ll look forward to a photo op!
Your friend, Rick
Election Year
You can find Heidi, her podcast and website at the links below.
Heidi Harris (@heidiharrisshow) • Instagram
Heidi Harris (@HeidiHarrisShow) / X (twitter.com)
You can find my sites on Linktree. And if you enjoy my writings, please consider hitting that cup of coffee and making a donation. Thank you!
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