Chicago radio legend Steve Dahl has kept active through four tumultuous decades in the broadcasting business, and he’s not expecting prostate cancer to slow him down.
“I have a curable cancer that 1 in 8 men will be diagnosed with, so this isn’t a pity party,” he told the Sun-Times in an email.
The host known for his humor and candor revealed the diagnosis Saturday on social media. Since a biopsy detected the cancer a year ago, he’s had an MRI for added clarity and expects to begin radiation therapy soon.
He missed a couple of his podcast tapings last week for a pre-treatment procedure but from here on, “I don’t expect to miss any podcasts,” he said.
Dahl is hoping to demonstrate to men that it pays to be diligent about getting PSA blood tests like the ones that raised his cancer suspicions.
“I feel good,” he said. “No better or worse than I always do. I just turned 70 last November, so it’s more of a mental thing than a physical thing. There are side effects to radiation, especially fatigue and some disruption to my digestive systems. We shall see.”
Dahl’s tenure in Chicago radio dates back to 1978, when he arrived from Detroit for an on-air job with WDAI, now WLS-FM (94.7). The next year he drew national attention when he and partner Garry Meier staged a raucous “Disco Demolition” rally at Comiskey Park.
Though the ‘80s and ‘90s and into the 2000s, with Meier and without, he was on the leading edge of the no-holds-barred “shock jock” movement and worked his way through multiple stations and radio formats.
It’s a more subdued Dahl who now hosts the podcast from the basement of his Western Springs home, bantering with his co-hosts, musician Dag Juhlin and writer Brendan Greeley. He won’t be doing any livestreams during his radiation treatment, like the notorious live broadcast during Dahl’s vasectomy in 1989.
“You must hold 100% still or risk zapping parts that you use daily,” he said. “I’m an animated speaker, and nobody was trying to nuke me during the vasectomy.”