Bob Labbe has been coming in to WLRH-FM in Huntsville, Alabama every Friday night for 35 years to host a four-hour live radio show. He does it as a volunteer.
He plays records, actual 45 rpm vinyl, from a personal collection of more than 20,000 of them, and interviews musicians and tells stories about pop music from 1950 to 1990, takes requests, runs contests, and then goes home.
He has been doing this since 1990. On April 13, 2026, the Alabama Broadcasters Association named him Large-Market Radio Personality of the Year at their 20th annual ABBY Awards ceremony in Birmingham.
He is 72 years old. He has been in broadcasting for 53 years. He did not see this one coming.
“I am totally shocked for winning this award as I’ve been in the business a long time where I’ve won awards for my work in television on Channel 31 and the numerous awards for my writing over three decades as a newspaper writer,” Labbe said in his acceptance speech. “But this award means the most.”
Who Is Bob Labbe?
Labbe grew up in Huntsville, where his father worked for the U.S. Army and NASA at Redstone Arsenal.
He started in radio straight out of high school, attending Elkins Institute of Broadcasting in Nashville and Columbia School of Broadcasting, and has never really left. Over 53 years he built a career that stretched across radio, television, and print in ways that are genuinely rare.
He worked as a sportscaster at Channel 31 (WAAY-TV) for about 15 years, winning awards and becoming the most popular local sports personality in the market multiple times running.
He left television in 1991 but kept going in radio. He has been a freelance sports reporter for The Madison Record for three decades, contributing to the Huntsville Times and other publications, accumulating writing awards alongside his broadcasting ones.
He has refereed high school basketball games. He has taught corporate CEOs how to present themselves in front of cameras.
He has been a master of ceremonies, a public spokesperson, a guy who has apparently done almost everything in local media while remaining one of the most recognised names in the Tennessee Valley.
He once personally covered Bear Bryant. He once boxed Muhammad Ali. He is 72 years old and still comes in every Friday night to spin vinyl for four hours on public radio.
What Is Labbe’s Show About?
“Reelin’ In The Years” airs on WLRH 89.3 FM, Alabama’s original public radio station, which serves north central Alabama and south central Tennessee, every Friday from 9pm to 1am.
It has been on the air since 1990, which means Labbe has been doing it for more than a third of his life. The format is specific and intentional. Pop music from the 1950s through 1990, played from Labbe’s own personal collection of over 20,000 45 rpm records. Not digital files. Not a streaming service. Physical vinyl, curated over decades, selected by a person who knows where every record came from and what it means.
Mixed in with the music are interviews Labbe has conducted over the years with some of the biggest names in music history.
WLRH, celebrating the show’s 35th anniversary in 2025, published a collection of highlights, including Vince Gill discussing joining The Eagles and Lionel Richie recounting a near-miss with something involving “the Commodes.”
The show also includes pop music trivia, artist history, and prizes for listeners each week.
Labbe volunteers his time as host and producer. He takes requests at (888) 330-8989. WLRH streams the show at wlrh.org.
He runs a Facebook page with music videos and trivia contests. The station describes the show as “the most unique radio program of its kind on public radio.”
What Does The Award Represent?
During his acceptance speech in Birmingham, Labbe revealed the thread that connects everything.
As a child, he played radio in his bedroom, the way some kids pretend to be athletes or astronauts, he was pretending to be a disc jockey. WLRH-FM has been the place, for over three decades, where that childhood fantasy became a standing Friday night appointment that thousands of listeners in North Alabama organise their evenings around.
The ABBY Awards are run by the Alabama Broadcasters Association, which has been recognising the state’s broadcasting professionals for two decades.
WLRH took home six total awards at the 2026 ceremony, which was held at The Club in Birmingham on April 13.
The Large-Market Radio Personality of the Year award going to a 72-year-old volunteer who plays 45 rpm records on a Friday night public radio show is not the kind of story that comes out of the algorithmic side of the media industry.
It is the kind that comes from 53 years of doing the same thing consistently, loving it, and doing it well enough that eventually the industry catches up to what listeners already knew.
Why It Still Matters
Radio as a medium is in a complicated place in 2026. Streaming has changed the economics of music delivery. Podcasting has changed the economics of talk.
Terrestrial radio, the kind that comes from a transmitter and arrives at a receiver through the air, has been in structural decline as an advertising vehicle for the better part of two decades.
The argument for local radio’s continued relevance has gotten harder to make in general terms.
Bob Labbe makes it in specific terms. He is a person who started doing a show about music he loves, for an audience who loves the same music, on a station that gave him the space to do it, and has continued doing it through every technological transformation that was supposed to make what he does irrelevant.
He has over 20,000 records. He knows the story behind all of them. He shows up every Friday and plays them for people in North Alabama who have been making Friday night appointments with his show for as long as some of their children have been alive.
At the acceptance podium in Birmingham, he returned to the image that started it all, a child in his bedroom in Huntsville, playing pretend radio, imagining what it would feel like to be a disc jockey.
WLRH gave him the real version. He has been living inside that childhood dream for 35 years, voluntarily, without compensation, once a week, on Friday nights from 9 to 1.
The Alabama Broadcasters Association gave him an award for it. He was totally shocked.
