Mark Stevens
Mark Stevens
While I’m a Pennsylvania guy, I was born in Newark, NJ and spent the first 12 years of my life there. This was when the space program was in its biggest years, so of course I wanted to be an astronaut back then. And, like most boys, I loved baseball. Because we weren’t far from New York, I went to the original Yankee Stadium a number of times, and even saw Mickey Mantle play! Our family moved to PA in 1970, to just outside of Mandata, out in the country. It’s a great area for hunting and fishing, but I found out I was good at neither. As a young teen, I worked two summers on Martz’s Game Farm near us. It was one of the great experiences of my life, and it’s why I have tremendous respect for our family farmers.
We moved to just outside of Selinsgrove in 1973, where our family had a home for 41 years. I consider Selinsgrove my hometown. I graduated from Selinsgrove High School and Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove. My senior year at Selinsgrove, I was on the track team, running long distance (2 miles) under legendary coach Jim Taylor. That year, Selinsgrove won the State Championship in track and I got to do the fire truck ride through town! High school track got me started on a lifetime of running. I still run 3 miles, 3 times a week! While in high school, I worked as a cashier and stocked shelves at the original Weis Markets in Selinsgrove, where Cole’s is now. I also got started working in radio in high school.
In those high school years, I started listening to the radio a lot, especially at night when, back then, you could listen to some big AM radio stations like WLS, WCFL and CKLW, out of cities like Chicago and Detroit. I got hooked on radio and the dj’s I heard. Local WKOK DJ, Than Mitchell, gave me the guidance on things I needed to do to get into the business, like get an FCC license. I did that and ended up a high school kid working in radio, at my hometown AM station in Selinsgrove. I didn’t know anything about the music I was playing – Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, etc – but I was on the radio!
I went to Susquehanna University for a Communications degree. From the day I started, I worked at SU’s radio station. My college years, 1976-1980, were an incredible time for rock music. A lot of albums now considered classics were released in those years: “Rumours,” “Hotel California,” “Bat Out of Hell,” “Aja,” “The Cars”…I could go on. Being that I had only listened to Top 40 radio, I got a real music education at WQSU, discovering Steely Dan, Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead and so many others.
My senior year at SU I started working in radio full time at WILQ, Williamsport. It had an amazing staff of professionals then, and I could not have gotten better career training. The first years of my adult life were in Williamsport and to this day, it’s one of my favorite places, I love to go back and visit. But at the time, I had wanderlust or something, because I ended up moving, just like the WKRP theme song says, “town to town, up and down the dial.” When you’re young, it’s exciting. Every city had some reason to like it, but of those I moved to, I liked Buffalo the best. I don’t think people know what a great city it is, and the people are great.
It turned out I really liked the South. For sure, I’m a warm weather person. I ended up discovering Savannah, GA. I loved it the first time I visited and ended up moving there and lived and worked in radio in Savannah for several years. If you have ever thought about visiting Savannah, do it!
Eventually I missed home, and moved back in March of 2020, to my hometown of Selinsgrove. I live in the family home of one of my good friends and high school classmates. It’s just blocks from where I went to high school and not far from SU. Right around the time I moved back home, Sunbury Broadcasting Corporation was looking to hire someone for several of their stations. The beginning of my radio history goes back to SBC, when as mentioned, I met WKOK’s Than Mitchell and he helped me with advice. Before I ever did my first radio show, I went to the open house of the then-new SBC building on Blue Hill in September 1974. That building that I toured that day as a teenager is where I work every day now. I am on the air mornings on 100.9 The Valley, middays on Eagle 107, and afternoons on 94KX.
When I’m not working, I love either being at the gym or running, I do one or the other 6 days a week. I’m very big on health and well-being. In recent years I went vegetarian, not just for the health of it, but because you can eat a lot of food without eating a lot of calories – and I love to eat! I also love to read, with biographies or books about historical events being my favorites, things like the sinking of the Titanic and the Edmund Fitzgerald. I loved the Steve Jobs biography. I love movies and love seeing them in a classic old theater, like the Campus in Lewisburg, which I first went to in high school. “Back to the Future” is probably my all-time favorite. I also really like “The Sixth Sense” and “Shawshank Redemption.” I don’t watch a lot of tv, if I do it’s either the NFL, or things like Seinfeld or Frasier, or something on Netflix. And of course, I love listening to music, which is what I do most of the time!