Lisa May says she’s not sure what she’ll feel when she signs off KLOS 95.5 FM for the final time on Friday, Dec. 13, bringing to a close three decades as a Los Angeles radio personality.

But she’s pretty sure tears will be involved.

“I think I’ll cry,” May says. “I think it’s going to be … I don’t think it’s hit me. Just talking to you, I’m getting all choked up.”

But as May leaves the airwaves for a new chapter as a fitness studio owner in the Coachella Valley, this time she’s going out on her own terms.

She had worked as a traffic reporter and eventually in-studio sidekick on the Kevin and Bean Show at KROQ 106.7 FM from 1991 until 2015. She was let go for reasons she’s still not entirely sure she understands.

Fans, some of whom had grown up with May were outraged, and KLOS program director Keith Cunningham snatched her up to deliver traffic and news on the Frosty, Heidi and Frank Show.

“I have a friend who did radio mornings in Atlanta for years, and he said, ‘I’m worried about you,’” May says about her current plans. “‘I don’t think you understand what this is going to be like. What a change it’s going to be for you.’

“And I’m sure that’s true.”

Accidentally on air

May was born and raised in Inglewood until she was 13 when her family moved to Costa Mesa. There, at Estancia High School, she excelled in speech club.

“But I couldn’t figure out how to turn that into a career so that’s why I ended up at business school,” she says of the degree she received at California State University, Fullerton.

After graduating, she worked as a broker for a few years, eventually figuring out that just because you’re outgoing doesn’t mean you’re suited for sales.

“I don’t think the two necessarily correlate that way, and I never was,” May says. “I thought I needed to do something before I have huge adult-sized bills where I can never make another change in my life.

“And I thought, Radio, maybe that’s how I get back into speaking for a living.”

She was never one of those people drawn to radio for the love of music. She’d grown up listening to Top 40 hits on the KHJ-AM, the old Boss Radio format. By the time she was commuting to college, though, she’d changed her presets to news and public radio stations, May says.

So May signed up for night and weekend classes at the now-defunct Los Angeles Broadcasters school. A classmate tipped her to an opening for a job at Metro Traffic, which provided traffic updates for L.A. broadcasters.

She got the job as an off-air producer, and before long was slipping mock traffic reports to her boss on cassettes she recorded in her apartment, which eventually led to her first on-air gig at the former KIK-FM country station in Orange County.

“Somebody was late one day and I jumped on the air for them,” May says. “You know, that’s radio. He got a flat tire I think. And I ended up taking over several of his stations.”

Lisa and Kevin and Bean

May, like most traffic reporters, usually worked for a company that provided that service, connecting with the jocks in the studio from a remote location. And that’s how she started at KROQ on the Kevin and Bean Show in 1991, doing two reports while juggling other broadcast clients, too.

“I still had a full schedule of other stations, but they would want to talk to me and would end up making me late for my other stations,” May says. “So what we did was as stations dropped off for whatever reason, a changed format or whatever, I would not replace them so I could have more time with Kevin and Bean.”

Eventually, she worked solely for Kevin and Bean, and in time moved from Metro Traffic to the KROQ studio, a decision about which she initially had reservations.

“It was hard at first being there because I was the only female, and you know, I just don’t think I understood how men teased each other,” May says of the rough-and-tumble clubhouse of the morning show. “And I remember calling Metro and saying, “I think I want to come back, I don’t want to be here.’

“But you know they’re actually super nice guys and really good hearts,” she says of Kevin Ryder, Gene “Bean” Baxter, and the rest of her KROQ studio comrades. “If you were ever to just say, ‘Fellas, don’t do it,’ they would totally respect that.’ And so over a little period of time, I started to feel more comfortable.”

May soon became much more than just a traffic reporter, serving more the role of sidekick who’d be brought into the on-air banter and joking around on the early morning shift.

“That part really made it a lot more fun,” she says. “It was kind of freeing to be able to do that.”

Nearly 25 years later, the end came suddenly with a call on the President’s Day holiday in 2015 not to go to work the next day. At the station, she was met by executives and the morning show crew who told her they were no longer doing traffic and had already picked a new female sidekick, Allie McKay, to replace her.

“It was devastating,” May says. “I’ve never said this to them, but the thing I think that bothered me the most was if they weren’t happy with me – and I will admit that the year before my sister had died and I was distracted – it would have been good to have a conversation.”

If the station simply wanted to bring in someone new, that’s fine, she says. But the way her departure was handled hurt, though she doesn’t hold any grudge against any of her former Kevin and Bean colleagues.

“I think Kevin and Bean were told by management that this was how they had to do it, so I don’t think it was their fault,” she says. “It’s just management is so tone-deaf when it comes to this stuff.

“It was awkward and sad and certainly not the way I would want that to end.”

A new gig, and now a newer one

Three or four months after KROQ axed her, May was back on the air at KLOS-FM as the traffic and news person for the Heidi & Frank Show (now the Frosty, Heidi and Frank Show).

In a recent email, KLOS program director called it “a no-brainer” to hire May.

“For decades, and for several reasons, Lisa May has been one of the most beloved radio personalities in Southern California,” he wrote. “Lisa May will be missed by Los Angeleno radio people far and wide.”

May says it took her a little time to feel fully part of the new morning show but says as she got to know Frosty Stilwell, Heidi Hamilton and Frank Kramer she came to love her new team, too.

“They were so welcoming; it made getting fired not so bad,” she says. “And they gave me the opportunity to do more than I did at KROQ, with the newscasts, which I have loved doing.”

Around the same time she joined KLOS, May and her boyfriend bought a place in Palm Springs, which they let as a vacation rental when they weren’t there. She also got deep into the “super-slow, high-intensity weight training at Strength Code fitness studio in Toluca Lake, which led to her getting certified in different kinds of personal training.

When she realized there wasn’t a similar fitness studio in the Coachella Valley, she decided to make the career change and open her own place next year in a location yet to be determined.

It will be different not having a broadcast signal on which to share opinions and thoughts, questions and comments, May says.

“It’s also kept me on top of what’s happening in the world – not just news, but pop culture – so I’ve always felt kind of young and in touch,” she says. “I think it’s going to be a big, big change.

“It’s going to take a little time.”