Ted & Amy Still Going … and Going … and Going

They recently celebrated 37 years on the air at 93Q Radio — perhaps the longest-running duo in Syracuse radio history. Retirement? No way, they’re still having fun, they say.

By Mary Beth Roach

 

Ted Long and Amy Robbins have been helping Central New Yorkers greet their day for nearly four decades.

This past November, the hosts of “Ted & Amy in the Morning” on 93Q Radio celebrated 37 years on the air, making them one of the — if not the — longest-running duo in Syracuse radio history. And they are close to the top of the list of national radio hosts to hold that distinction nationwide.

According to numbers provided by station program director Rick Roberts, the weekly cumulative audience estimate for  “Ted & Amy in the Morning” for listeners aged 12 and over is 48,000. It means that the show draws that many different listeners over the course of a week.

Their longevity, they said, is due to a variety of factors, including that theirs is a Top 40 music station, their local ties run deep, the fact that the pair remains very involved in community projects and the two have a genuine friendship, which comes across to listeners with the stories they share, their witty banter and self-deprecating humor.

Long, now 65, — he joked that he has the Medicare card now to prove it — grew up in Marcellus and got his start in radio from a gig he did at Marcellus High School.

Long said he had been emceeing a talent show at his high school in his senior year and one of the judges was from 93Q. He told Long he thought he was a funny kid and suggested he come into the station and make a tape.

He took the suggestion and got a part-time job at the station. Graduating in 1979, he started working at 93Q in 1980 part-time and went full—time about six months later. He had had several on-air partners before Robbins, including hosting a morning program with Dave Laird.

Robbins, who said she is 55-ish, is a Camden native and received her degree in journalism from Ithaca College in 1987. She had sent her resume to the station but was told they didn’t have an opening at the time, so she went to WEZG, an easy-listening station in the area.

She started at 93Q in November 1988, after the station contacted her and told her that they wanted to add a news person to the Laird and Long program.

“Because I had no credibility, I really couldn’t do the news with my partner at the time, so we were looking for someone to do the news for us,” Long joked.

Shortly thereafter, Laird left the station and “it’s been us ever since,” Long said.

 

Local content

Ted and Amy’s programming is focused on local people and events and that has been a major factor in the pair’s longevity. So many stations, Long noted, are now carrying syndicated programs.

Robbins credited the show’s success to the station’s corporate owner, Cumulus Media.

“They still believe in local radio because there’s a lot of corporations that don’t,” she said.

Enhancing that local appeal is their public appearances — and they do a lot of them, as do other colleagues at the other local Cumulus radio stations.

“I think people know that we’re a part of the community and we care about the community,” Robbins said.

In 2011, they became “the official voices of the New York State Fair,” providing announcements heard all over the grounds and introducing acts on the Chevy Court stage. Some years, over a million people hear them, Long said.

Since 2017, they have been emceeing the Syracuse St. Patrick’s Parade in downtown Syracuse.

And Long can now be seen in TV commercials for an area credit union.

Long before these two gigs was Amy’s Slumber Party, which is now celebrating its 23rd anniversary. This year, it was held at the end of February at an area hotel. The ultimate girls’ night out, with shopping, pampering, dancing, karaoke and more, can draw nearly 800 women across all age levels. Robbins said some of the guests now include grandmothers, their daughters and granddaughters!

Their connections with the community are further underscored by the many awards they have received.

The duo was inducted into the New York State Broadcaster’s Association Hall of Fame in 2019.

And it’s that commitment to staying local that has kept the pair in Syracuse.

“We’re so local. It’d be hard to translate what we do to another city,” Long said.

“I don’t think we’d be funny in another city. I don’t think we’d fly because I think we’re very Central New Yorkish,” Robbins noted.

And the two have seen other people in the industry leave and try to come back, but often unable to regain the popularity they once had.

What resonates with listeners, too, is the friendship they convey. Sometimes, Long said, he thinks their fans tune into “The Morning Show” to enjoy the hosts’ banter as much as to listen to the music.

He’s not wrong.

“We had chemistry pretty much from Day 1,” Long said. “It’s very rare that you have that spark with somebody. It’s been amazing and it still is amazing. I can’t imagine working with anybody else.”

Robbins said that she and Long are best friends and the two have shared some of life’s heartaches.

Long’s wife, Bobbie, died from liver disease in the fall of 2022; 16 days prior, Robbins lost her mother, Jacquelyn. She now helps care for her 94-year-old father, William.

Long was public about his wife’s disease and in September of 2022, he talked on local media outlets about her need for a transplant. Unfortunately, doctors determined that she was not strong enough to endure the transplant surgery and she died in October.

Long’s ability to discuss something so personal and heartbreaking, yet remain strong, seemed to inspire their fan base, Robbins said.

“The impact of sharing something like that and being as open, I think, really made a difference regarding how close people feel,” Robbins said.

She added, “We’re not perfect and we’re not always happy, but we try to be really genuine and share our lives. And I think that’s one of the reasons people keep tuning in.”

 

Keeping it fresh 

The radio industry overall has changed dramatically since they first hit the airwaves. Music, technology, audience tastes and business models.

“It’s unbelievable that we used to just come in and do a radio program,” Robbins said.

Now, they podcast; they stream. Robbins, who also serves as the show’s executive producer, also updates their social media pages and their website as needed.

Podcasting, Robbins said, is like “going back to old-school radio,” when people tuned in to listen to talk radio or their favorite program.

Because of Spotify and Pandora, streaming, other radio programs and podcasts, the pair is aware of the need to remain unique.

Toward that end, they will update their contests and other features from time to time.

“We don’t want to rest on the fact that our show has been a success and so it’s going to continue to be so. And we want to stay relevant,” Robbins said.

She cited their “Dog Tired” Tuesday promotion they did with one of their clients. They decided they needed to freshen it up a bit, so now it’s “Doggy Delinquents,” where listeners can send in photos of their dogs misbehaving or wearing their “shame signs” and have it posted on Ted & Amy’s Facebook page.

One of features that has since gone away was their April Fools’ Day pranks.

Listeners of a certain age will remember some of the crazy jokes they played.  They were elaborate, especially considering that, according to Long, they might come up with them just the day before or the morning of April Fools’ Day.

Long recalled their 1997 prank. The U.S. Treasury was starting to change the way money looked, with the portraits on the front of the bills being made bigger. They told their listeners it was the last day people could exchange their old $5 bills for the new ones and that after that, the old bills would not be any good. As a result, banks were swamped with calls from customers.

Another one was about an underground amusement park dubbed Salt World located in the abandoned salt mines out at Onondaga Lake. Obviously, no such park existed, but people were still driving around looking for it, Robbins said.

But the best one, Long said, had to do with old landline phones. Listeners were told that if there was static on the phone lines, the lines needed to be blown out, so they needed to cover their phones or duct tape their phone jacks.

Now, Robbins said, a lot must go through the lawyers for approval first.

 

Favorite and not-so-favorite parts

As with any job, there’s good and bad.

Since “The Morning Show” airs from 5:30 to 10 a.m., one can appreciate that the hours might be among the least— liked parts of the job.

“Waking up at 3 o’clock in the morning is definitely not my favorite part,” Long said. “On weekends, I sleep late. I almost make it till 5:30.”

And Robbins concurs, although she said that once she’s up, she’s fine. The upside, she said, is they avoid a lot of traffic.

But the pair agrees that the favorite part is their listeners and now that they’ve been on air for nearly 40 years, their fan base spans across all ages.

“What an honor to have generations of family members that continue to tune in!” Robbins said.

While the work hours don’t always allow for a lot of social activities outside of work, they are both members of the Cicero American Legion.

Long is also a member of the Elks Lodge in Liverpool and a bowling league. During the pandemic, at home in Baldwinsville, he started watching a lot of cooking channels on YouTube and has developed a repertoire of recipes and he enjoys playing guitar.

Robbins and her husband, Mark, enjoy traveling and in 2020, after 20 years, completed their 50-state adventure. Now, they stay closer to their Cicero home and enjoy traveling through the Finger Lakes area.

 

Retiring? 

People have asked them from time to time when they’re going to retire.

Long has the answer. “Retire from what? Laughing every day? I so enjoy this job and working with Robbins so much.”

“We always said we’re going to do this until we don’t have fun anymore, or they decide that we’re not having enough fun to create listeners,” Robbins said.

If that’s the case, then they will be waking up Central New York listeners for quite a while longer.