T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY — Longtime 1230 KFJB Host Kyle Martin, right, speaks to Heart of Iowa Big Brothers Big Sisters Executive Director Lynne Carroll during his famous “Man on the Street” segment at the Tremont on Friday morning. Martin is celebrating his 20th anniversary with the station today.

Kyle Martin sees most who work in the radio business as going on a journey for “the next big thing.”

“It’s a tough business, a nomadic business,” Martin said. “It’s not uncommon for DJs to work at 12 or 15 different radio stations in a lifetime.”

That speaks volumes of the Marshalltown community where Martin has found his radio home, celebrating his 20th year on the airwaves for KFJB on Monday.

“This community has been really good to me,” Martin said. “I feel like the relationship I have with the listeners and the people in this town is like family.”

Martin was drawn to radio seeing his father, Denver, Colo., radio legend Charley Martin, work his craft.

“I’d go down to the studios to watch him on the radio, and at first it looked like he wasn’t doing anything, just reading off a paper,” Kyle said. “Then someone in the studio would point to him and he’d become this animated radio star. I thought that looked like a good job. No heavy lifting, don’t have to dig ditches for a living.”

Kyle posits that most radio people at heart are either frustrated musicians or frustrated actors, and he passed on his initial plan to take acting classes at Drake to instead start working at KIOA at 19 with a full load of college classes at the university’s school of journalism and mass communication, working overnights where he said he was often known amongst his co-workers simply as “Charley Martin’s kid.”

Charley was one of those that helped Kyle find his footing in radio, even though Kyle admits his father tried to discourage him from following in his footsteps.

“But there were people there mentoring me, being honest with me,” Kyle added. “A lot of it was the professionalism of a pretty well-known commercial radio station where I worked with people that were easily 25, 30 years older than me.”

After graduating from Drake in 1989, he was part of a KIOA lineup in 1990 on overnights as “The Midnight Rambler.”

From there, Kyle chased the fleeting, nomadic side of the business his father warned him about, bouncing from Ames to Grinnell and back to Ames in the 90s, then jumping to Ottumwa in 2002 where KBIZ eventually switched from an oldies format to a news/talk format, moving Kyle away from playing music for the first time in his career and more specifically utilizing his journalism degree from Drake.

“Before, I’d have songs to fill time in-between me talking. Now I was the filler,” Kyle said with a laugh. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss playing music, but the talk format suits my abilities really well — I like to talk.”

In 2004, Kyle landed in Marshalltown, where KFJB had just undergone a similar transition to a news/talk format. Since then, he’s hosted the morning show that airs from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. every Monday through Friday.

When he first arrived, all he knew was Marshalltown being a similar-sized town to Ottumwa. But once he got to know the people, he developed a “love affair” where alongside his wife Amy, they raised their three daughters, Peyton, Abby and Grace. And he’s become locally famous both for his affable demeanor and his weekly “Man on the Street” segment at the Tremont.

“There’s wonderful people that do a lot of caring here that you can see with the giving to the United Way or the tornado and derecho recovery,” Martin added. “And I was getting older, raising kids – I didn’t want to be that person bopping around the country looking for the next hot thing.”

Martin also pitches in with MC duties for various events like the Oktemberfest parade or other festivals that scratch that actor’s itch he had as a young Drake student. He also gained some notoriety recently when, after serving as the co-chair of the Marshalltown Area United Way’s 2023-2024 campaign and helping the organization reach its $825,000 fundraising goal, he made good on a bet and jogged down Main Street in a Speedo with cameras and onlookers observing in awe.

“I love the little things like that, the kind of public performance where I can get that immediate feedback instead of sitting behind a microphone in a glass booth,” Martin said.

As he approaches 40 years in the radio business, Martin doesn’t know if he’ll celebrate another 20 years at KFJB.

“But I hope this community radio station is still embraced 20 years from now,” Martin said. “And I think it will be — this community is so good and generous in a time where a lot of communities lose their hometown radio stations and don’t have a morning show to give them information.”

Martin encourages those who want to be the next host of the morning show on KFJB to find hands-on experience like he did as a young college student.

“Find an internship, do a podcast in your basement, go to your local radio station and say ‘I’ll be the janitor as long as you let me watch what’s going on’,” Martin said. “I would never discourage anyone from going to college. I think you should go to college, but you’ve got to get that hands-on training, get your foot in somewhere.”

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Contact Jake Ryder at (641) 753-6611 ext. 227 or jryder@timesrepublican.com.