Larry Price leaving Perry and Price

Radio’s power pair will part ways, as Larry Price will step away from co-hosting the long-running, top-rated “Perry and Price” morning radio show on KSSK-FM 92.3/AM 590 at the middle of this month.

An announcement from station parent company iHeartMedia Honolulu said he is making the move to “focus on other interests” within the company, and did not explain the reason.

Price, 81, instead will co-host a sports show with Rick Hamada on sister station KIKI-AM 990, known as FOX Sports 990. It will air Saturdays at 11 a.m. beginning later this month.

“I decided the time is right and appropriate to make this change,” Price said in a statement, further expressing gratitude for the “support of our loyal listeners and for all the great years on KSSK.”

He and Perry have co-hosted the show for 33 years, following the death of their predecessor, highly rated radio personality Hal Lewis, who went by J. Akuhead Pupule, or “Aku” for short.

“Being a market’s No. 1 radio show for 33 years is unheard of in American radio,” said Chuck Cotton, president and general manager of iHeartMedia Honolulu.

Their self-introduction, “Perry on the left” and “Price on the right,” never was intended to be a reflection of their political leanings. Rather, it was a spur-of-the-moment comment relative to where each was standing in the studio their first morning on the air. The phrase stuck even though Price is a staunch Democrat, while Perry’s conservative views are well-known to listeners.

Price “certainly deserves the opportunity to sleep a little more, and work a little less,” said Perry.

Price initially was hired by KSSK as vice president of community relations in 1977, not long after his two-year stretch as the head football coach for the University of Hawaii.

Price also worked as an investigative reporter for KITV in the 1980s; a decade in which he earned his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California and became an MBA professor at Chaminade University, where a classroom and scholarship have been dedicated in his name. Price also was a columnist for MidWeek for many years, until his last “The Right Price” column appeared in the weekly publication on April 14.

His rise to household-name status started during his football playing days at Roosevelt High School, the University of Hawaii, and with the Los Angeles Rams.

The duo will do their last broadcasts together from the stations’ Iwilei studios this week, and then will air live shows from a cruise next week for the final time.

Perry will continue handling the morning show and the live broadcasts of the Saturday morning breakfast show solo, the station announcement said.

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In 1977 Larry Price gave a speech that would change his life. His friends don’t remember the specifics, only what happened next.

As Price spoke at a public gathering, Cec Heftel, then the owner of KGMB AM-FM radio, watched how the former University of Hawaii-Manoa football coach mesmerized the audience with wit and humor. Heftel decided right then to hire Price.

“He said, ‘I want this guy on my team. I don’t know what he will do, but I want him on my team,’” recalled Dale Machado, who had been hired by the station only two months earlier. “I remember they gave him an office in a storeroom. There was junk in the room, and he had his desk there.”

Inauspicious as that was, the job put Price on a path to the top of Hawaii radio and a 33-year command of the morning airwaves. Although Heftel gave Price a public relations job, he paired him with Michael W. Perry in 1983, and “The Perry &Price Show” quickly became the No. 1 choice for morning listeners — a position the show has maintained with few interruptions ever since.

But on Thursday, Price, 81, retired from the show as it broadcast from a statewide cruise on the Pride of America.

It was a low-key departure, with nothing said at the end of the broadcast.

“Nobody really talked about it,” Ma­chado said. “Larry is a very private man. He didn’t want to make a big deal of it. Nothing special was said.”

Price’s departure, announced last week, doesn’t mean the end of “The Perry &Price Show.” KSSK plans to continue airing it under the same name, but with Perry as the solo host. And Price will co-host a weekly sports show on sister station KIKI-AM 990.

[wait, I'm hearing Larry Price on the radio now as I'm writing this.  I guess he didn't leave yet?]

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5/27/16 - The Legend of Larry Price