Ray Hill celebrates 30 years of building hope on Prison Show
originally published by: chron.com
25th March 2010
Ray Hill was the stand-in groom, and for the wedding he draped a sport coat over his radio station T-shirt. The real husband-to-be couldn’t make the ceremony.
He was in Huntsville, serving 10 years for dealing drugs. Compounding the bride’s wedding-night jitters was the worry that her ex-husband wouldn’t approve and might make trouble. As Prison Show volunteers gathered around a tiny wedding cake in the staff room of KPFT (90.1 FM), Justice of the Peace Dale Gorczynski, seated in an adjoining studio, intoned the familiar wedding words.
Nearly 10,000 people, many of them inmates, listened as Hill, a long-time Houston gay and prison provocateur, gave a proxy promise to love and honor, then sealed it with a peck on the bride’s cheek. It was his 12th radio marriage in a broadcast career spanning decades.
Hill, 69, will celebrate a milestone of his own today (25th March 2010) when his weekly show marks its 30th anniversary. The two-hour call-in show, the longest-running such radio program in the nation, is credited with bringing prisoners a mix of criminal justice news, words of cheer from friends and family and Hill’s own avuncular analysis and advice.
