My Voice: A Memoir (23 page)

“Well, you know, we’d want to have you on in New York,” he said just as I gulped my mint tea.
Oh God
.

Doc promised to poke around and offered to get back to me.

“Sure. Whatever,” I said, telling myself to stay open yet feeling kinda crazy.

Holy shit! I just met with Clear Channel! Oh my God.
Just even having tea with the man felt like such a big deal. I’m sneaking out of the London, hoping nobody sees me.

The next step was a meeting Doc wanted me to have with Thea, the vice president of programming for all the New York stations—Z100, Power, KTU. She’s the program director of Power, and she oversees all the other ones, so she’s the New York person. I knew meeting Thea was
gonna include talking about me being on Power. I knew what that conversation was.

So now Thea and I are meeting at the Dream Hotel. Even more fucking popular than the London! I’m going to meet them in their suite. At least we’re not going to be in the main bar. So I pull up to the hotel and Thea sneaks out of the elevator, and we are walking really quietly, quickly to the elevator. We ordered sushi and wine up to the room for dinner. I love sushi and wine, and the fact that Thea wanted to order sushi and wine gave me some sense of comfort.
She’s not the evil enemy. She’s somebody in radio who likes wine and sushi just like me.
I know that sounds corny and crazy, but it took away that whole facade of her being this big bad enemy person. Both of us were a little guarded. A lot of radio personalities, they’ll talk to the competition to get their money up and then go back to their station and go, “Well, Clear Channel said they’re going to give me XYZ. What are you gonna do?”

So maybe she was skeptical. “Why now?” she asked. “Why would you meet with us now?”

“Honestly, Thea, I don’t even know what I want to do or what my next step is.” And I told her the truth, the same thing I told Doc. “I’m just curious to know what my options are. I’m evaluating my career and what I want the next few years to look like. And honestly, the station has changed a lot.”

I didn’t want to give her too much. I didn’t want her to think I was unhappy and ready to go right now, but I wanted to be honest. After a little bit of wine and some sushi, we got a little bit more comfortable, but we still didn’t say that much. ’Cause, you know, at this point, we’re still competition sitting there together eating.

From there Thea and I started talking, texting, e-mailing. “I would love to make this work somehow,” she said. “Let’s start thinking about what it would take to do that.” Thea and I are a lot alike in terms of that
we say what we mean and we mean what we say. We’re not gossipy people. It was a very direct conversation from the beginning, and we agreed about not letting word get out to the public or anyone, for that matter.
This conversation is safe here
. It needed to be.

After a few very honest talks, they sent me an offer that was good. Really good. And it wasn’t just about the money. I was now going to have a more national profile with a show airing in multiple cities.

All this time, I hadn’t thought about what my vision for growth even looked like. Suddenly, I realized that this was exactly what I needed—to take what I did to something bigger than being at one station. To a company where even further growth was possible. Clearly, as in all breakups, I had to face the truth that Hot was no longer the place I had fallen in love with. It was a really easy decision. That part was easy!

But then I’d stop myself and panic.
What about Enuff and Flex, Miss Info and Mister Cee? Am I not going to see these people anymore? How does this work? How is this gonna be perceived?

First came the logical decision that I made clearly with no outside thoughts. Then came the understanding of all the noise that would come with it.
Do I not leave and take this great opportunity because I want to work with my friends forever?

I talked it over with Oronde, who was wildly supportive throughout the whole process. He was able to look at everything from a more practical perspective because he didn’t have the emotional connection to Hot that I did. All he cared about was what was in my best interest. These were some of the benefits of dating a talent manager, and I took full advantage. He helped me see that my fears were unfounded. The people who are my friends, they’re still going to be my friends. Sure, it’s fun to work with your friends, but when you have a family and you want to grow and evolve, then sometimes that means change.

Yet even with Oronde’s counsel, I had to sit with all of this on my
own. That’s me. Again, it’s how I problem solve. I have to throw out all the other opinions and get internal and figure it out for myself. In that space, it became clear—I know that ultimately I have to deal with myself, by myself. I’m going to have to go in and resign. I’m going to have to sit in that chair a last time. I’m going to have to get on the radio and tell everybody that I’m doing this. So ultimately I have to be okay with all parts of that. So I got really quiet and figured it out.

Other than Oronde, I didn’t even tell my lawyer until Thea and I had already come to a bunch of agreements. As I was closing in toward the end of the deal, I was at Don Coqui in City Island having dinner with Pecas and my longtime friends Fat Joe and his wife, Lorena. The three of them were there at dinner with me as I was at the table texting with Thea, negotiating little details, the last points. She had me down for three weeks of vacation.

I need four weeks of vacation.

Fine, four weeks
.

Oh my God, I feel like we’re done
.

It feels like we are
.

Right there at Don Coqui, it hits me—
Holy shit!

“I think it’s done,” I tell Pecas privately. Mind you, I had kept him out of the loop after he set up that first meeting with Doc. “I think I have a deal.”

Pecas was already a few drinks in and I’m not sure he believed me or fully understood what I was trying to tell him. I didn’t mention another word to anyone and spent the rest of the night toasting to my big secret.

The next day the lawyers start going over the details. I’m in contract mode, but I’m still going to work every day at Hot. I’m not telling anybody anything. We’re promoting Summer Jam. I’m there and I’m still in it, but I know that I’m not going to be for long. Being at Summer Jam the last time was the weirdest and most surreal thing ever.

Standing on the stage, I took a picture of the audience.
The crowd is so big
, I marveled. I definitely had a moment there. My breath—it was like a gasp.
Wow, this will be the last time I’m here
. I felt the weight of it. For the past eighteen fucking years, this was who I was. It was the end of an era.

Staring out into the crowd, I wanted to be
fully
in the moment. I wanted to make sure not to miss it. Sometimes I ignore shit and keep it pushing, just to get to the next step, but I wanted to feel this. Be there. Appreciate it. And I didn’t feel any sadness about it. That’s how I knew I was so ready. There was nothing about this that I wasn’t ready to walk away from. Yet I didn’t feel a disconnect from the audience in any way. I didn’t feel like I wasn’t going to see them again—they were just going to see me somewhere else.

Nobody knew, so that whole day was just me, deep in my own head, in my own world. When the day was over, I went home, feeling full, complete, and ready for whatever was next to come.

•   •   •

I
had my assistant TJ start backing up all my files at the station. I had multiple lockers full of cassettes, DATs, and CDs of interviews from the nineties and all my old archives. He was putting them on hard drives and taking boxes of tapes and CDs to my car two at a time. I don’t think he realized why he was doing it, but TJ was a soldier and he was loyal, so even if he did suspect, he would never question or say anything. I didn’t know how the station was going to take it when I left. Sometimes what happens in radio is that you leave to go to the competition and they take your key card, erase all your shit. You don’t get anything and your past is your past.

Anxiety starts flooding my mind, thinking about all the things that could happen.
Is Flex gonna be mad at me? How is Enuff gonna take it?
Can I, at some point, bring Enuff with me? Would he even want to come?
In your contract, you’re not allowed to take anybody with you for at least six months. It’s called poaching. I was worried about what was going to happen to some of them.

In preparing myself for these conversations, I got the tragic news that Flex had lost his mother. This was awful. Flex was very close with his mom and he was taking it really hard. It broke my heart to watch him go through that. At the funeral, I stood in the back of the room, looking at him, hurting for him, and just praying for him to be okay. I went over to offer my condolences and saw him sitting in the chair, in so much pain. I bent down to kiss him on his forehead.

Even though I dreaded having to have the conversation with him about going to Power, it needed to happen soon. Still,
he just lost his mom. I don’t want to tell him this
.

Thea and I had come up with a strategic plan. When are we gonna do this? Thea had to make some changes in her lineup and fire her midday girl, so she had to be able to tell her staff. I had to be able to resign and tell my staff. And neither one of us wanted to do it and let the other side find out in a bad way. We had to do it at the same time. I was honest with Thea about one exception. “Listen, I do have to tell Flex beforehand,” I said.

“No, he’s gonna—”

“Thea, this is not negotiable. I am telling you this out of respect because I don’t want to be dishonest with you and say, ‘No, we’re not gonna tell anybody.’ I’m gonna tell Flex. I promise you it will be okay. But I have to.”

“Are you sure?”

“I promise you.”

And so I called Flex the night before I planned to resign. I didn’t know how to resign. A letter? Did I walk in there?

“Hey, Ang. What’s up?” Flex was in his car, driving. I’d been checking in with him a lot since his mom passed.

“I need to talk to you.”

“Uh-oh. What’s wrong?” I guess he could hear in my tone that this was serious.

That’s when I broke it to him that I had been having conversations with Clear Channel.

“Yeah?”

“Well . . .” I couldn’t even get it out.

“Nooo—” His voice starts cracking. “Ang, nooo . . .” I remember him saying it in such a painful voice, my heart hurt. I wanted to start bawling.

“Flex, I have to.” For a second it got really quiet. Silence on the phone.

“Hold on. Let me pull over,” he said. So he pulls the car over and I told him everything they’d offered me.

“Okay,” he said. “You’re doing the right thing. I don’t want you to feel like you’re not. You are . . . So who have you told?”

“I haven’t told anybody. I’m telling you first.”

“Well, let’s just wait . . . You didn’t sign anything yet, right?” Flex asked, hoping this was still negotiable.

“No, Flex. I signed the contract. I’m resigning tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?????” There was a beat. “Well, you need to call Rick.”

Rick Cummings was vice president of programming for all the Emmis radio stations. He wasn’t based in New York, but he’d been with the company since I had.

Flex said it again. “You gotta go to Rick.”

“You’re absolutely right. I’m gonna call him tomorrow.”

“No, Ang. You have to call him tonight. Don’t do that to him. Don’t blindside him in the morning. Give him the respect and call him tonight.”

I had already told Thea that I was only gonna tell Flex. But Flex
walked me through what was the right thing to do and who I should talk to first, second, and third. “You call Rick tonight. You show up at the station tomorrow and tell them in person. And then you get on that radio and you say goodbye.”

“Do you think they’re gonna let me do that?”

“Ang, you’re gonna say goodbye. You’re not gonna walk out of that building without saying goodbye—that’s not gonna happen.”

So I call Rick.

In the whole time I worked for that company, I maybe had called Rick two times ever before. Bizarrely, about a month before, in the middle of my negotiations with Thea, Rick asked me to dinner. At first I thought he had gotten wind of my news. Instead, he apparently wanted to pick my brain, as he seemed to sense that things weren’t great at the station. The irony was that after all these years, this was the first time I had really spent with him, and as much as I was dying to help him put out a few of the fires, I had to remind myself that it was time to let go. Instead I ordered another round of sake. Finally, Rick and I had a chance to bond and now I had to make
this
call.

No answer. Just voice mail. I hang up, somewhat relieved, and call Flex back to tell him Rick didn’t answer.

“I have another number,” Flex says. “Call it.”

Fuck.
I call and leave a message. “Hey, Rick, it’s Angie Martinez. Call me when you get a sec. I really need to talk to you.” I hang up.
Fuck, I left the message. Now it’s real.

This was on a weeknight at around ten thirty p.m., and these are corporate guys in Indianapolis. The phone rings and I see this weird area code.
Shit. I know this is him
.

“Hey, Angie. It’s Rick. What’s going on?”

With my heart pumping and my voice cracking, I blurt out, “Well, I got an offer to go somewhere else.”

“Ohh,” he said.

“Yes. Clear Channel made me a really great offer to come there and give me multiple markets, and I want to take it.”

“Wow. I’m assuming your contract must be up, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow. We really messed up there, huh?”

I just kind of laughed.

“Well, look, Ang, you know I can’t offer you that. I don’t have that to offer you,” Rick said. “If I could, I would. As much as you’ve done for this company, I can’t think of anything else to say to you but thank you for everything you’ve done. And to wish you well.”

It was so sweet. “That means so much. Thank you, Rick,” I said. “I was really worried about having to tell you.”