It’s been a few weeks since Kevin Ryder signed off from KROQ 106.7 FM for the last time, but he still wakes up at 4 a.m.

As one-half of the station’s long-running “The Kevin & Bean Show” and its short-lived follow-up, Ryder spent more than 30 years rising early to be a friendly, familiar voice to Southern California commuters. That’s a long time in a person’s life and an eternity in the realm of media and pop culture.

“I’m trying my best, but sometimes it’s difficult to focus on the fact that I had a bizarrely entertaining, crazy ride doing a morning show in Los Angeles for over 30 years,” he said. “That’s unheard of, and I’m trying desperately to keep my focus there.”

Ryder, along with most of the Kevin in the Morning with Allie & Jensen show crew, were abruptly let go after the show aired on March 17. When the station allowed Ryder the chance to say goodbye the following morning, he thanked listeners and the talent he’d worked alongside for more than 30 years, including his co-hosts Allie Mac Kay, Jensen Karp and Gene “Bean” Baxter. Ryder also got in a few jabs at his previous employers, calling the unexpected “firing” in the thick of the global coronavirus pandemic “heartless.”

So does he have regrets now that after more than 30 years he finds himself suddenly and unceremoniously out of a job he held for so long?

“Look,” he said. “If I knew it was going to come to an ending like this and I was going to be treated super unfairly and it was going to be really painful, would I have taken the job at the beginning?”

“Absolutely.”

Bean and beyond

Ryder started at KROQ alongside Baxter with “The Kevin & Bean Show” on Jan. 2, 1990 and presided over a long and successful run at the station together until last year. The pair had originally met while they were both working at KZZP 104.7 FM in Phoenix in 1987.

Ryder, who is originally from Phoenix, worked at several radio stations before his first big break at a classic rock station, KOOL 94.5 FM.

“It won’t surprise you,” Ryder said. “I hated the music.”

Kevin Ryder (left), of KROQ 106.7 FM’s The Kevin & Bean Show and Kevin in the Morning with Allie & Jensen, was abruptly let go after 30 years at the Los Angeles radio station on March 18. (Photo by John McCoy, Contributing Photographer)

Kevin Ryder (left), of KROQ 106.7 FM’s The Kevin & Bean Show and Kevin in the Morning with Allie & Jensen, was abruptly let go after 30 years at the Los Angeles radio station on March 18. (Photo by Skyler Barberio for KROQ)

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Kevin Ryder, of KROQ 106.7 FM’s The Kevin & Bean Show and Kevin in the Morning with Allie & Jensen, was abruptly let go after 30 years at the Los Angeles radio station on March 18. (File photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Kevin Ryder, of KROQ 106.7 FM’s The Kevin & Bean Show and Kevin in the Morning with Allie & Jensen, was abruptly let go after 30 years at the Los Angeles radio station on March 18. . (Photo by Skyler Barberio for KROQ)



Ryder then moved on to KZZP 104.7 FM, also in Phoenix, in 1987 where he was on-air from 6-10 p.m. nightly. He said the station had the highest ratings he’d ever seen and that “almost everyone that worked there went on to much bigger and better things.”

He and Bean didn’t work together much at the time except for when they’d head out in a van with a large antenna to broadcast live from the homes of listeners for the station’s “Saturday Night Party Patrol.”

“Bean joined me on that,” Ryder said. “Imagine Bean going to people’s houses. Everyone was drunk except for the narc, Bean.”

Neither had ever hosted a morning radio show before coming to KROQ, but they figured it out. After co-hosting for the first time ever on Dec. 31, 1989, counting down the year’s best songs to ring in the New Year on KROQ, they went on to count many more years together until Baxter left the show in November 2019 to move back to his native U.K.

Even so, things seemed to look positive for the future. As he left, Baxter said, “I’m excited about what the show and station are going to be doing in 2020 and you don’t need to stop and think about me. Just move on to the next thing.”

So they did. When Ryder returned to the air Jan. 2 after his regularly scheduled winter break, the show was renamed Kevin in the Morning with Allie & Jensen. By March, it was all over with Bean tweeting from England, “That’s no way to treat a Hall Of Fame show.”

Celebrities and silliness

While the post-Bean lineup proved to be short-lived, the three decades of “The Kevin & Bean Show” provided Ryder with the opportunity to interview countless musicians, actors and pop culture icons. And some weird moments.

“Probably the weirdest was we had Larry King on and [comic] Brad Williams was backstage and said to me, ‘Do you want me to go hump Larry King’s leg?’ and for me that is the height of comedy. So I was like, ‘Absolutely, there would be nothing better,’” said Ryder, recalling one of the duo’s April Foolishness charity events.

“But [morning show producer] Dave The King of Mexico saw us getting ready to do that and ran over and tackled Brad to stop him before he did it. Stuff like that … you don’t have time to get your head around that until afterwards.”

The duo started the annual charity comedy show, which featured appearances by Ray Romano, Patton Oswalt, Iliza Shlesinger, Ralphie May, Gabriel Iglesias, rock-comedy duo Tenacious D and more over the years. The event raised money for The Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, which works with veterans with traumatic brain injuries, and Cedars Sinai NICU, which helps critically ill babies and newborns.

April Foolishness is also where Ryder effectively began and ended his rap career as he lost to Baxter during the first-ever Kevin & Bean Rap Battle in 2019 in front of the live audience.

“It was frightening as hell,” he said. “I was so scared and my hand was shaking. I kept telling myself, ‘Stop your hand shaking, everyone can see you!’ But, I couldn’t.”

Working at KROQ also gave Ryder seemingly unlimited access to musicians, whether it was interviewing artists backstage at the station’s annual Weenie Roast or Almost Acoustic Christmas or one of the morning show-hosted intimate performances with bands such as Green Day, Sting, U2, Foo Fighters and more.

Ryder names Foo Fighters leader Dave Grohl as his favorite all-time guest. “He’s a musician, he’s passionate and he’s funny,” Ryder said.

During one musician interview, though, Ryder remembered being so nervous he almost walked out of the studio.

“I was like, ‘OK, I feel like I should leave because Johnny Cash is here,’” he said. “He’s somebody I shouldn’t be in the same room with. That was one of Bean’s favorites because he worshiped him, so I thought maybe I should just leave it to Bean. It was so weird.”

Comfort during catastrophe

Though there were many good times, Ryder was also the voice on-air during some national tragedies, including the days following the terrorist attacks in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001 and the day after the Route 91 Harvest Festival, the deadliest mass shooting in recent American history, in Las Vegas on Oct. 1, 2017.

“A couple of times throughout my career I realized people turned to us because we were familiar voices, but there’s no training that you go through that can prepare you for those serious situations,” he said. “You just hope your instincts are right and you talk about it the best you can. That’s where I think the KROQ listeners are really special, in that they wanted to hear us talk about it and they knew we didn’t have all the answers. But they were good with that. That’s the type of support that most radio stations don’t get … it’s rare.”

Ryder and Baxter received several awards during their run including Marconi Radio Awards and they were inducted into both the National Association of Broadcasters’ Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 2015 and the Radio Hall of Fame in 2019.

“To be inducted into a Hall of Fame that Vin Scully is in, I just think that is a big mistake,” he added.

Ryder recently appeared on “The Adam Carolla Show” with comedian and former KROQ personality Adam Carolla and Jimmy Kimmel, who did sports on KROQ long before he was hosting “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on ABC. He said people often credit “The Kevin & Bean Show” with launching the careers of former staffers like Carolla, Kimmel and even sports radio host Matt “Money” Smith and radio and podcast host “Psycho” Mike Catherwood.

“We had nothing to do with that,” Ryder said with a laugh. “They were already funny and we reaped the benefits. They were already super-talented and we were happy to be able to ride their coattails for a while.”

A last laugh

Overall, looking back at the years on the radio, Ryder describes his career as being “like a cartoon” in that he’s more comfortable when people are laughing — with him, or at him; He’ll take it either way.

“If people are laughing, even if it’s at my expense, I don’t care,” he said. “I can’t help people in real ways, so if I can help them be in a better mood, that’s what I have to offer.”

These days, he’s been focusing on editing videos and mixing music as well as sifting through messages from friends, family and fans. He’s not letting himself go too far down an emotional rabbit hole.

“I’m just trying to get my feet underneath me, understand what happened, just be grateful for the parts that were amazing,” he said, sounding as emotional as he did during his final on-air farewell on KROQ. “And most of all, figure out a way to thank everybody that was so endlessly supportive of us, even when sometimes we definitely didn’t deserve it.”