But it's also very important.

Today is my last day sitting in here doing this silliness.

Robert Lynn Faehn was born on April 2nd, 1958, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, The family moved to South Dakota and started farming near Wallace in the 1960s.

After Bob's father passed away in 1973, he and his mother moved to Florence.

Bob's interest in radio, started at a young age after getting a special gift.

some relatives sent him some stuff and they had a tape when he was probably eight years old, doing interviews with people in him and the recordings and how he asked the questions.

It was pretty interesting.

And so I guess it's been in them for a long time.

It was in his in his blood.

severe weather warning issued by the U.S.. Well, a tornado has been sighted one mile away and is moving westerly at 445 miles an hour.

Anyone in or near this tornado area should take immediate cover.

This is a tornado.

Besides doing mock news stories.

Bob also played disc jockey using the persona of Mick Mercury.

What were you before you became an astronaut?

What else do you have to say now?

No.

I mean a small way to.

Where are you going on your vacation?

Who did you meet?

The Well, you don't make it back to Earth.

I mean, just.

That's all from your space announcer Mic Mercury.

Bob graduated from Florence High School in 1976 and started school at South Dakota State University.

However, the move from a small school to the big university was a challenge.

coming from a small town of 14 graduates going into S-D-S-U back in 76 was a little intimidating to him.

So in September of 76 he went to what was then the Watertown Business University and got a two year degree in business, association and administration.

from there He worked part time with the Public Opinion doing sports at night.

And then when he graduated, he went into advertising and sold ads there and sports at night.

And then he left the public opinion went to work for at that time, Watertown Home Fire Company saw paint and appliances.

But Bob's love for radio could no longer wait, and he set out to begin his broadcasting career.

His time in sales.

Created some relationships in radio that would be beneficial later.

my relationship with Bob Faehn All started back back in the early seventies when he was running a cabinet appliance store in the west side of Watertown.

And I was in town making some sales calls and thank you calls with salespeople at in those days.

K-W-A-T and K-I-X-X And I met Bob as a thank you call.

He was an advertiser on our radio stations and then later on he got into the radio business.

We became competitors Bob started out in radio back in 1984.

He was working for a retailer here in town, and he did a play by play with Jim Thompson at the softball complex.

Loved being on the air, Bob quit his job, went into insurance for about 4 to 6 months to prove to Jim that he really wanted this, and then he got hired on it.

K-S-D-R. started out in sales and then became the general manager and then the owner.

It turns out that Bob Faehn was just what K-S-D-R needed at the time.

K-S-D-R was really on the down and out The managers had abandoned basically I think you'd just had enough Some guys in Brookings owned the radio station.

They hired Bob Faehn to be the sales manager.

So he comes over and Bob very savvy guy and just naturally savvy.

Not like he sits and thinks about being savvy.

He just is.

So he stays close to these two owners down in Brookings and they stay close to him.

And there's we start seeing a little success, little success.

And they call up Bob and they'd say, How would you like to buy that radio station?

And they sold it to Bob.

Bob's work at K-S-D-R and his approach to radio was quickly noticed by his competitors.

all the time.

That he was a competitor of ours.

I frequently talked to our staff about, Don't you ever say anything negative about Bob Faehn That's the kind of competitor we all would like to have every day.

Bob sold K-S-D-R in 2000, but kept some interest in radio stations in the Sioux Falls area.

He then moved on to work at the Cable and Internet Provider Knology in Watertown, where he met Melissa Herrboldt.

He was a business manager there, and I was actually the door to door sales person.

He hired me for door to door sales.

in Bob Faehn fashion, too.

I went to him and I said, I can't do door to door sales.

And he goes, Well, I don't want to lose you.

Let's have you do part and part inside and part outside.

I said, If you can get me off the streets part of the time, awesome.

he just had that knack for figuring things out.

Despite being out of the business, Bob's interest in radio continued until he finally decided to go back to his passion he didn't like the way things are going with radio.

And just saw?

It was too commercialized.

He said it needed to be live.

It needed to be local.

He wanted people to be aware of what was going on, not nationally, not statewide, not throughout the country.

He just wanted everything.

That's was his motto.

Live and local.

He wanted to be there for the local communities and be hyper focused on what's going on, make sure they have content, make sure they have entertainment.

You know, our music, he always said, was just a fill in in between the fun stuff.

So you don't listen to us because of the music.

You listen to us because of our people and our information that we have on the radio for you.

we had talked about it and I said, If you don't like what you're doing and you don't like the way radio is being run here, you need to either quit your job and do something about it or stay where you're at.

And that's when he talked with Dean.

after he retired from selling K-S-D-R he used to call me and say I retired early, I need to get back in the business.

Then one day I called him up and I said, Bob, the FCC has done some more changes of their allocation process and it's now possibly you can take out a radio station in one market and move it to an entirely new market and relicensed that dual community.

Well, based on that, I put him in touch with a licensee over in the here an area and he called up and that person was interested in helping him move one of the licenses to the Watertown area.

And one day in the conversations, one of them called me up and said, You're in the deal.

Do I?

So how do I get.

Well, you're for your friends of both of us.

So based on that, I went from advertiser radio station relationship to a competitor relationship to now a partner relationship.

And with a lot of radio beliefs in common radio that morning and addressing and serving a community's needs is still a very wanted commodity in most any community I know about.

With the creation of K-X-L-G in Watertown, Bob knew who he needed on his team to be successful.

he was starting this radio station, he looked at me one day and said, I have a job for you.

I can't tell you what it is, but I have a job for you and you're going to love it and you're going to be really good at it.

I'm like, okay, He could have told me I was doing shoveling manure all day long and I would have been like, Okay, sounds good.

Bob, of course, was very well known in the community.

And the basic premise that he was facing was he was going to have one radio station and his real competitor in town had six.

So he said, I have to have an all star team.

And so he was able to recruit the Dean Johnson and Jim Aesophs of the world to come join him.

Another team member Bob sought out was local radio journalist David J.

Law.

David J.

Law had done news for 40 years in Watertown, South Dakota.

That's why he brought David with because he knew he wanted that as a piece of K-X-L-G.

He was competitor for many years.

You know, when the he and, of course, Jim Aesoph were part of K-S 93.

And they just grew that into a powerhouse over the years.

Bob knew that he was going up against some strong, well-established stations in the Watertown market.

However, his work in the community and Eye for Talent gave K-X-L-G a chance to be competitive.

a relatively small radio station comparable in a town with seven other radio stations.

How could that possibly work?

Bob Faehn's community involvement was a big part of making that work.

He knew everybody and he was on every board is very smart along those lines.

That's what made it work because you you bring that big gun over here the whole town came with you.

I had a great job at K-W-A-T in 2008 and he came to me and says, Would you be interested?

I'm thinking of this idea, you know?

And I said, Well, sounds interesting, but boy, I'm pretty comfortable.

You know, I've been doing this at this station, but doing the talk show thing and la la la.

But he said, I think I've got a pretty neat concept.

And so of we took the leap K-X-L-G live and local worldwide on the web at K-X-L-G dot com already 8 minutes after nine, there's a great day in the forecast K-X-L-G Reliabank weather ball K-X-L-G went on the air in 2009 And was an immediate success How about we leave it green and here comes the KELO land storm center guide Weather's next when Bob Faehn bought this station it it took off and never stopped it.

Sales were good from the start and it escalated every year in the 15 years he was.

Had it I say that I grew up with K-X-L-G but I also got to grow up with, I think, the best of the best in the radio industry.

Bob loved being with the people and trying to help people and see businesses succeed, see individuals succeed.

And the best way of doing that is to help them through their advertising, through whatever he could to promote their business, He was huge supporter of his communities, but he had a lot of behind the scenes stuff that he did.

And many times here at the station.

He would if somebody came in with an idea.

And they I mean, a lot of times they just do an impromptu fundraiser on the radio just to help the organization or the person out.

So that's that was just his nature.

Bob was as common a guy as you would ever meet and knew how to handle people.

Bob probably taught me don't ever be scared to ask a question, just ask it.

And that was one huge thing for Bob.

He never made you feel like you were asking a really dumb question, even though it was probably a really simple question.

He knew the answer, but he just had a knack for helping people grow his phrase with me always was, Now what do I have to do to get you to say we're giving away $5,000 on the air or more often, you know, because, you know, that's a lot of money.

And I wasn't promoting it enough to his liking.

And he was right.

But so what do I have to do to get you to say that that's a big deal on the radio?

And I always remember that phrase as a good way to a good way to set it up, as time went on and K-X-L-G success grew, Bob started looking for someone to take over.

He did not have to look far, I just worked away, did my staff, I was promotions director.

I did front office, I did sales.

I kind of just did whatever Bob asked of me.

probably five years into my career, he said, I think I'm going to start grooming you to take this place over.

I was like, okay, sure, whatever.

I trusted Bob fully, so whatever he said I did.

I truly just it was just this chemistry that we probably had.

He always said that I was being to his yang.

Bob received many recognitions and awards during his career, both for his work in radio and his community service.

However, he didn't like being in the spotlight.

he he did not like the notoriety when he got the Pankow award I had I was trying my best to get him to stay.

We were supposed to go on a trip and I knew he was getting this award and he just I couldn't get him to not do this trip and to postpone it.

And so I finally had to say, You're getting this award.

I don't need this award.

He said, It's not.

He said, I didn't do I didn't do anything special.

He said, I'm not you know, that's not him.

diagnosed with cancer in 2019.

He began making arrangements to ensure K-X-L-G would remain on the air and locally owned.

I mentioned yet on the air this morning that I've chosen to take the retirement road.

And so today is my last day sitting in here doing this silliness.

So it's you A lot of times over the years, you and I have said, hard to believe we get paid for this.

So I'm going to stop that.

yeah, we first sat down, you and I sat in 1984 across the table from each other back at the K-S-D-R in the old building where they have Empire pizza ad And what are you flagging here?

Just people.

And oh, there's people in the doorway.

1984, 37 years ago, I took a little hiatus, but we've been doing this for a long, long time.

And sooner or later, you know, And you outlasted me.

Oh, goof.

Yeah.

Oh, well, anyway, we'll we'll be saying you appreciate a lot of the you know our our listeners that we obviously were nothing without them appreciate that and all of our you know our customers over the years all our sponsors that made this all worthwhile.

And gosh, when we built this thing, I'm happy it happens that I that I'm leaving next Tuesday, which is the 12th anniversary of when we went to work building this on the same day.

Bob was diagnosed with cancer he made me general sales manager.

So we kind of stepped me up into that role to kind of get me accustomed to different things that had to be done and just the different position here because I grew up with these people.

things really went quickly, though.

I feel like the two years that he was sick and he wasn't here a lot of time, so I kind of did have to just step up and do it.

Bob passed away on September 13th, 2021, at the age of 63. the outpouring from the community was very, very humbling.

I mean, the stuff that I got in cards or texts or emails, thankful that he was in their life because how he helped them, that and a lot of people didn't know behind the scenes stuff that he had done with helping people with their business or even financially if they needed help or investing.

He was yeah, it was very, very humbling.

always told him before he passed away that he said the last ten years of my working life were the most fun years of my life.

And he made it that way.

He was that good.

Really, truly.

for somebody to give you an opportunity like that and then I bet you the last five years, about once a year, he'd say, you know, if you want to buy this place, I would love to sell it to you.

And I always thought, if my I'm never going to be able I know what we do.

I know, you know, I know the basis.

I'm like, I there's no way I could ever do that.

My husband and I and he would just let it go and another year and move on and he'd offer it up again.

And I'm like, How about you just always own it and I'll run it.

Like, I'm totally cool with that.

it wasn't obviously until he got sick that he's like, I'm never going to sell my station to a corporation ever again.

So he said, Even if I have to sit on this or sell it for less or whatever, it will always go to somebody local.

And I assumed that I would be working for somebody else.

all of our partners came together very organically.

I'd say they did it because they love Bob.

They knew what this place meant to Bob, and it all just came together.

And we are.

it's local radio and it will stay that way.

Bob's work outside of radio included being the vice chair of the South Dakota State Board of Technical Education, serving on the South Dakota Broadcasters Association, Board of Directors, the Watertown Community Hall of Fame Committee, Vice President of the Watertown Area Chamber of Commerce, the Watertown Area United Way, the Prairie Lakes Hospital Board and Prairie Lakes Foundation Board, along with the Watertown Community Foundation Board.

Just to mention a few, the impact that Bob had wasn't just community, it was statewide.

It was also national.

Bob was part of the Idea Bank group.

And we found out on the day of his funeral that they had lowered the people in the idea bank, lowered their flags to half mast for him because of the impact he had with the idea of and also so I mean, that's how far his giving reached was.

It was just phenomenal, He also served in the South Dakota State House of Representatives, where he sponsored the indoor smoking ban bill and served as the House majority leader during his last two years.

he lost both of his parents to cancer.

And that's why the cancer center got built here, because his mom, we took her every day to Sioux Falls and then when he was out in Pierre, the year he became the majority leader, he told me he was not going to carry any major bills.

And then I called him home and we had a talk and I had breast cancer.

And he went back to Pierre and he took the bill and for it to stop the non smoking and that is probably he would say his biggest accomplishment was to get that bill passed.

K-X-L-G remains a successful radio station today and Bob's influence remains I people will come up to me and say, this is what Bob did for me.

And I just I'm blown away because he never talked it.

He just did.

It helped and moved on.

was not only a great boss, but he was just was just phenomenal in the community behind the scenes.

A lot of people don't know his philanthropy and all of the things he did for the community besides just give free airtime and all that kind of thing.

he built a station of people he wanted.

He just had an uncanny talent for finding the right people to fit the plug in to the right spots.

It's continuing.

I think Bob is definitely up there putting things in place for