Radio station entrepreneur and former Big Boy restaurant chain owner Robert Liggett Jr. died Friday at 76, according to an obituary.

Liggett, a Grosse Pointe Shores resident and businessman with an array of interests, had pancreatic cancer.

Liggett was born in 1943 in Beaumont, Texas, and lived most of his life in Michigan. He began working at a radio station at age 14, gearing up for a long career that led to a Michigan Association of Broadcasters lifetime achievement award in 1999.

He bought his first station in the 1970s after graduating from law school at Wayne State University in 1969. Liggett founded and built Liggett Broadcasting into a Lansing-based empire that was at one time considered Michigan's biggest radio group, the obituary said.

At one time, Liggett's enterprise owned 29 stations in Michigan, Ohio, Minnesota, New York and California. The entrepreneur purchased and sold a variety of stations in the 1980s and then sold his nine Lansing and mid-Michigan radio stations in 2000 for $121 million to Citadel Broadcasting Corp.

For the last two decades, he owned and operated five Port Huron area stations, according to a short article on Liggett's death posted by one of the stations, WPHM. The five stations operate as Radio First, serving the Thumb area and southwest Ontario.

Liggett bought the 455-restaurant chain Big Boy and most other assets of Elias Bros. Restaurants Inc. out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late 2000 for $24.8 million and soon began consolidating its fractured franchise operations to pursue consistency and growth, Crain's reported. He was owner and chairman of Warren-based Big Boy Restaurants International LLC until 2018, when he sold to a group of local investors. As of that year, Big Boy operated and franchised 84 Big Boy, Bob's Big Boy and Big Boy's Burgers and Shakes restaurants in Michigan, Ohio, California and North Dakota.

He also bought The Shores Theatre in St. Clair Shores in 2004, citing sentimentality as part of the reason in a 2005 Crain's interview. He said that in the 1950s he and his brother would get a quarter each to spend Saturday afternoons there.

Liggett also bought the Grosse Pointe News in 2007 and sold it to the founders of bimonthly Grosse Pointe Magazine in 2017. And he was an investor in software companies and alternative fuel, and founded high-speed internet provider SpeedNet LLC, Crain's reported. SpeedNet sold to Sprint in 2009.

He was also the Detroit Red Wings' public address announcer from 1963-71, according to the obituary.

He was philanthropically involved with organizations including the Liggett Breast Center at the Van Elslander Cancer Center in Grosse Pointe Woods, Detroit literacy nonprofit Beyond Basics and the Children's Center of Detroit. He served on boards of the Detroit Historical Society, Wayne State University Foundation, St. John Hospital Foundation and others.

He is survived by his wife of 31 years, Victoria; daughters Maureen Fettes, Emily Philpot, Marjorie Liggett and Roberta Liggett O'Malley; four grandchildren; brother David Liggett; and sister Roberta McNeilly.

Visitation is planned 3-8 p.m. July 25 at A.H. Peters Funeral Home in Grosse Pointe Woods. The funeral service is 11 a.m. July 26 at the Grosse Pointe United Methodist Church in Grosse Pointe Farms.