GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — As the sun rises on yet another morning commute in Grand Rapids, there's one voice that hasn't only been giving you the traffic and weather, but a friend to talk to and start your day on a good note.
Tuning the radio to 100.5 The River...
"Light and relaxing, good morning with Andy Rent!"
That all too familiar hello, and quite the familiar face as well! Andy Rent has been an icon of West Michigan for over half a century, recently celebrating that milestone in 2019.
He wasn't always on the radio, however.
"I used to be on TV, but it was a long time ago. So nobody recognizes [me] now, which is fine with me." Andy chuckles.
"The voice, kind of gives it away!" he laughs.
Andy's story began at a young age when he recalls he and his twin brother both fascinated by television and radio.
"I can never explain it," Andy admits. "Sometimes you gravitate to whatever your career is or whatever your passion is."
Andy's passion for broadcast however didn't have the same pathway an aspirational broadcaster may take today as he attended Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.
"I wasn't really sure that I could make a career out of it. So I minored in majored in speech and minored in music." Andy recalls.
"There wasn't even a broadcasting major at that time!"
Andy found his way into radio regardless, as stations began popping up around Indiana.
"When I first started, it was a little tiny radio station in Richmond, Indiana. I was just playing music wasn't even barely talking."
If you've heard his voice though, you can imagine that didn't last long.
"I loved talking to people, I loved interviewing people, I loved everything that I could do," he exclaims.
Thus his blossoming career brought him to West Michigan, which at one point he saw as just another stepping stone.
"I moved up [to West Michigan] thinking I'll be here for two or three years, and then [I'd be] off on my next great adventure. For whatever reason, I just loved West Michigan. It became home" Andy says.
And so it became, Andy treated West Michigan's listeners like his own family for over half a century.
"On my end, I immediately have an image of who's listening to me. I'm thinking, 'I'm talking to a person, I'm talking to someone and I visualize a person or a group of people listening', because I want my listener to feel as if we're friends and we're communicating."
Andy takes care of his friends in as many ways as he can.
"I want them to have the best time, be entertained or, or be informed," he says.
"That's my responsibility."
Andy adopts that responsibility due to many factors, but arguably the most important being the time of day he gets to speak to Michiganders.
"In morning radio, that's the one time of the day that you want that friend talking to you and makes you feel comfortable [and] makes you feel safe," he says.
So be it traffic reports, your daily forecast, or a conversation with Meals on Wheels GR he had on the day 13 ON YOUR SIDE sat down with Andy, he always has something new to tell you as a friend.
Time has not always been on the side of radio, as more and more turn to new forms of content like podcasts. Andy however isn't too worried.
"As Mark Twain said, 'The story of [radio's] death has been greatly exaggerated.'" Andy hardly contains his laughter.
"We've had to evolve so that people can listen to it online [or] on their phone. They can listen to it literally around the world," he says.
"You realize how people are getting their information and their entertainment at the same time. And yet, people want a friend, people want to connect."
It's hard to imagine a morning commute in West Michigan without a friend like Andy. Yet he knows better than anyone that there are many more friends to be made as the years go by.
"Someone will say, 'Well I don't have a voice for radio. I could never be on the radio because I don't have a voice for it,'" he says.
"I say 'Yes, you do.' If you have the emotion and you have the ear, People can hear you through your voice and know you through your voice," Andy smiles with pure confidence.
"You have a voice for radio," he says.