Friends forever: Ginger looks back on 38 years at KBCO | John Moore

Over the past 41 years, Ginger’s signature radio voice has wafted into hundreds of thousands of Denver-area ears. Introducing the songs of our lives. Interviewing world-class rockers. Sharing life’s joys and tragedies. Keeping us up to date on her furry, four-legged friends. Sometimes giddy. Sometimes smoky. Always friendly.

And no matter how large her listenership grew to become, that signature KBCO voice somehow made you feel like she was talking to only one person, and that was you.

She has a last name – Havlat. But to her listeners over the past 38 years, she’s just Ginger. Not in a cool “Cher” kind of way. More in a “Hav-what?” kind of way. (“Nobody ever got it right,” she said, as she says most things – with a laugh.) 

Ginger signed off from her final midday shift on Dec. 31, just a few days shy of her first on-air date back in January 1982. That was a wrap on one of the longest-tenured voices in Denver radio history.

Now it’s the listeners’ turn to speak, and the cacophony of love they have been sending Ginger’s way has left her in happy tears. Just about the nicest thing anyone has told her, she said, was this: "You are one of us."

That one meant everything to her.

“I think ultimately, I just want to be remembered as a friend of the airways,” she said.

‘I'm gonna soak up the sun. I got my 45 on so I can rock on.’ – Sheryl Crow

The beat goes on at KBCO, but the walls of its South Monaco Street studio aren’t shaking quite as thunderously as they were a month ago. When Ginger put on a song, she didn’t turn the volume in the studio down. She turned it up.

“I was notorious for certain songs shaking the walls like Concrete Blonde’s 'Joey' and Gnarls Barkley’s 'Crazy,' ” she said with a laugh. The music, she added, has been her fountain of youth. “And I did just have my hearing tested – and guess what? It’s fine.”

Ginger was also known to dance on the job. “Years ago, there was some talk about putting a web camera on us in the studio,” she said with horror. “I said, 'No way! I signed up for radio because nobody's looking at me – and if I want to dance, then I will.” (And if you’re like me, Billy Idol’s “Dancing with Myself” is now earwormed into your brain.)

Ginger was among the first local radio personalities to interview rising artists like Jack Johnson, Sheryl Crow and Brandi Carlile early in their careers. Chris De Burgh (“The Lady in Red”) kissed her on the cheek after a ride in a limousine. And, oh yeah, she interviewed Paul McCartney backstage at Folsom Field in 1993.

KBCO’s in-person recording sessions have been released as “Studio C” CDs since 1988, raising hundreds of thousands for charities like the Boulder County Aids Project and Food Bank of the Rockies. Ginger’s favorite Studio C rap sessions have included Sheryl Crow in 1994 and Tori Amos in 1999.

“Tori really opened up about the many women who had disappeared and were believed to have been murdered on the border between El Paso and Juárez,” said Ginger. Amos had written a song called “Juarez” with the haunting refrain … “No angel came.”

“I remember her talking about how you could put your hand to the ground and feel the heartbeat of those women who had been killed,” said Ginger. “We were both choking up. It was just such an emotional moment.”

“Remember how we listened to the radio, and I said, 'That's the place to be’?” – Harry Chapin

Ginger graduated in 1979 from Augustana University in Sioux Falls, S.D., with majors in English and journalism. But dabbling in campus radio landed her a job on a local morning show that paired 23-year-old Ginger with a 60-something partner whose idea of a rippin’ top-40 tune was Barbra Streisand’s “The Way We Were.”

“It was a miserable failure,” Ginger said cheerfully. She came to Denver in the fall of 1981 after landing a weekend spot at 1390 KFML. She was hired by KBCO on New Year’s Eve and began doing overnight shifts a few weeks later – leaving her temp job at IBM behind.

At the time, KBCO operated out of an office park at 48th Street and Arapahoe Avenue in north Boulder that is now a health clinic. She remembers her DJ booth had a couple of turntables for vinyl and that commercials were stored on alphabetized cartridges in a little spinning carousel. Whenever she played a track, she would write the title on an index card (the color of the ink indicated the time of your DJ shift). “That way we made sure the same person wasn’t playing the same song over and over,” she said. “It was kind of prehistoric – but it was kind of fun.”

From the start, she said, Ginger was allowed to play whatever songs she wanted, with obvious exceptions for profanity and common sense. “Really, does anybody want to hear the Beatles' 'Revolution No. 9’ on commercial radio?” she said, yes, with a laugh.

‘Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof’ – Pharrell Williams

When Ginger started, BCO, as the station is still colloquially known, was a 5-year-old mom-and-pop operation that Bob and Diane Greenlee turned into the forerunner of "adult album alternative,” or AAA – a format quickly adopted by stations around the country. Triple-A essentially embraces both classic rock and the rising alt-rock format that took off in the ’80s and ’90s with bands spanning Dave Matthews, Indigo Girls, Blues Traveler and Bonnie Raitt. The concept continues today with artists like Bruno Mars, Allison Ponthier and Nathaniel Rateliff and the Nightsweats. It’s a format that allows a DJ to play, say, Led Zeppelin and The Weeknd back to back. (And, if you’re Ginger, Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” as often as you want.)

While the music has evolved and the industry has become fully corporatized, Ginger and her colleagues have defied industry trends by largely working their entire careers at KBCO. Ginger did, in her own words, jump ship for a stint at 96.5 The Peak from 1994-97. “But I came back home because I knew where home was,” she said.

Ginger is part of a remarkably intact family of on-air personalities that has grown older alongside their listenership, like the lifespan of a family. KBCO Program Director Scott Arbough and DJs Bret Saunders, Keefer Fulgham, Robbyn Hart and Ginger represent 150 years of KBCO history – an average of 30 years each. Hart, who was shockingly laid off by station owner iHeart Media Denver earlier in the year, was brought back last week as Ginger’s midday replacement. Nothing could have made Ginger happier.

She attributes the staff’s longevity to chemistry and camaraderie. “We all work and support each other for the common goal,” she said. “We're not a staff of egos. Nobody's walking around with Ray-Bans. No one has handlers. We're just common folk who love what we do, we love the station that we work for and we respect our audience.”

And from the day she started, she added, “My program directors really let me be me. Some stations want to fit you into a particular mold. So they might say, ‘Don't talk about your cats.’ Or, ‘People don't care that you filled up the room with the smell of tuna with your tuna salad.’ Instead, they told me: ‘Just do whatever you want.’

Last week on Facebook, Keefer jokingly recalled being told when he started that there are different rules for Ginger. “That just cracked me up because it’s true,” she said. “But I do think it’s better when you let people just be who they are.”

‘Now I realize there’s so much more to learn, I’m ready for the world. Not scared of letting go.’ – Melissa Etheridge

After four decades, Ginger recently decided it was time. Time for travel, marathon walks and more volunteer service. Her work for Boulder County AIDS Project has become a lifelong passion, and she’ll soon be out delivering for Meals on Wheels herself.

She’s leaving exactly as anyone should want to leave a life you’ve built one song at a time – on top, beloved and already missed.

"Not everyone gets to leave the radio business on their own terms,” said her friend and KBCO colleague, Bret Saunders. “Ginger's talent and dedication to the medium really are incomparable. It was comforting to know she was there every day for the 25 years we worked together."

The response to Ginger’s retirement has caught her humbly off-guard. She was overwhelmed when Mayor Michael Hancock issued a proclamation naming Dec. 31 “Ginger Havlat Day” in Denver. I didn’t have the guts to ask her which meant more to her: The mayor’s proclamation … or 5280 Magazine including her on its 2002 list of Denver’s 24 “Sizzlin’ Singles.”

Without taking so much as a speech class, Ginger clearly made a lasting connection with the people of Denver.

‘Save all your goodbyes by leaving me tomorrow.’ – Brandi Carlisle

In her final address, Ginger told her listeners it's been an incredible ride. She had promised herself not to do a cheesy sign-off song. But when McCartney’s 52-year-old lyrics whispered to her: "You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out of here," she knew what she had to do.

“My last song had to be The Beatles’ ‘Two of Us,’ ” she said.

That song brought it right back to what it always was for Ginger.

“It's just you and me,” she said. “Just the two of us.”