I'm tickled pink over some local news that my two favorite dj's have returned to the airwaves. I was crushed when their previous station up and cancelled their show with no explanation. I was driving into work one morning when the Roula & Ryan show wasn't on as usual and they just kept repeating the traffic and news. I kept waiting for some reason as to why the show wasn't on when they finally played a commercial advertising the new upcoming morning show with Sam Malone and I was stunned. There was no explanation or any mention of them whatsoever. The website had all of the new morning show information and not even a whisper of Roula & Ryan and that made me even madder. It was like they'd just vanished and I never got any closure! I even wrote this really long letter to 96.5 chastising them for their stupid move. I had problems sending it through their email system and can't say if it ever reached them as I never got a reply, but I did try, and it was a pretty good letter if I do say so myself. I asked them why they would fix something that wasn’t broken and told them that if I were a radio station manager in the Houston area I'd be on the horn making them an offer that very day and that I thought they'd made a huge mistake. The music was okay but it was Roula, Ryan & producer Eric that kept me tuned in every morning. They were really funny. That was at least eight months ago and I've yet to find another morning show that I like. I’m totally psyched over their return. I lived for the two days a week when they featured my favorite segments.

Thursday mornings at 7am was “War of the Roses” where you could call or email the show if you suspected your spouse or significant other of cheating. They'd start off with a brief history of the relationship and why the caller suspected they were being cheated on. The jest of it was that Roula would pose as a telemarketer and call the suspected cheater saying they'd been chosen to receive a dozen red roses to be sent anywhere in the US for free within 24 hours, and once she could convince the caller into accepting them, she’d have them give her the recipient’s name and a personal greeting for the card. Nine times out of ten, the card would be for someone other than their spouse/significant other. Then Ryan would come on the line identifying himself before informing them of the real reason for the call and that their spouse/significant other was also on the line listening in. They were almost always shocked, speechless and stuttering with priceless responses. Then would come the confrontation between the two and almost always a denial. After listening to this for over a year, I’d heard a variety of endings from good to bad.

For example, the caller who discovered that his spouse had cheated with his step-dad, the mother-in-law who busted her daughter-in-law cheating with her husband’s best friend while her husband was away in Iraq, the girlfriend who wondered why her boyfriend of 10 months had such a sparsely decorated apartment and only wanted to hang out at his place discovered that he was actually married, the pilot who sent his roses to a flight attendant with the card that read, “Please return your chair to the upright position”, the husband whose wife was cheating with another woman, the gay couple where one was seeing his ex-girlfriend and used the excuse that he was just trying to persuade her to have a baby for the two of them, and the guy who caught his wife and best friend after he had them call the best friend to offer him the roses. I even remember one guy listening to Roula's spill before saying, “I know exactly who this is, Roula” and not falling for it. Don’t ask me why anyone would want to air their dirty laundry for the whole city of Houston but I’m glad they do.

Friday mornings was “Forgive or Forget” where someone called in wanting to apologize to someone for something they’d done and Roula would call this person and tell them that she had so and so on the line and that they wanted to apologize for whatever had happened. Then the recipient of the call was given an opportunity to respond and decide if the relationship was worth saving and if they wanted to forgive them or forget them. I recall one in particular that still makes me laugh. A guy called in wanting to apologize to his best friend’s wife for a practical joke gone badly. After hearing her side of the story it was apparent that he was notorious for his pranks over the years but that his latest had really taken the cake. She had a casserole baking one Sunday afternoon while her husband and his friends were watching football. He snuck into the kitchen and added pieces of Purina Dog Chow deep into the dish so as not to be apparent to the naked eye. When she got on the line she ripped him apart and said the worst part of his joke was that she’d taken the casserole dish to her aunt’s home to be eaten by her family after the funeral of her uncle, and that her entire family had been eating the casserole before someone discovered the chunks of dog food and throwing up and that she’d have to seriously consider forgiving him.

Ironically, they went to the station where their replacement came from and I predict that 96.5 will soon regret their decision to ever let them go. According to the website at 104 KRBE, they will be featuring “War of the Roses” tomorrow morning at 7am and I can’t wait!! Okay, I admit that it’s a morbid concept and sort of like watching a train wreck, but it makes for very interesting water cooler discussions.