Background

Ethnicity: Howard Stern's paternal grandparents, Froim and Anna (Gallar) Stern, were Jewish emigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His maternal grandparents, Sol and Esther (Reich) Schiffman, were Jewish emigrants from Poland.

Howard Stern was born on January 12, 1954, in New York City, New York, the United States. He is the youngest of Ray and Ben Stern's two children. He was brought up along with his older sister Ellen in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens. Howard was an extrovert, while his sister was comparatively quiet in going about her routine.

His father Ben served in the United States Army and later took up a job as a radio engineer. His mother Ray worked as an office clerk and later became a respiratory therapist.

Education

A year after Howard was born, his family moved to Roosevelt, New York where he completed his studies. He attended Washington-Rose Elementary School and later went to Roosevelt High School. He also attended Hebrew school and was given the name Tzvi, a famous Jewish name. As a youngster, he was interested in marionettes and conducted puppet shows to entertain his friends. He also took piano lessons and formed a band called Electric Comic Book along with his friends. He was the lead pianist and vocalist of the band.

Stern's early taste for radio and recording seems to have been inherited from his father, the part-owner of a recording studio who frequently taped his son and daughter on the holidays. The sometimes short-fused father frequently quizzed his children on current events, an open invitation to his young boy to get sarcastic when he didn't know the answers. "So when I asked him these serious questions, he ends up being a wise guy," recalled Ben. "And so I got mad and said, 'Shut up and sit down. Don't be stupid, you moron.'"

Stern showed an early love of not only performing but also the outrageous. In the basement of the Stern family's Roosevelt home, Howard frequently put together elaborate puppet shows for his friends. The performances had come at the urging of his mother, but Stern quickly gave them his own twist, his marionettes more than living up to his title for the performances: The Perverted Marionette Show.

As Roosevelt was witnessing a rise in the dominance of the black community, his family moved to Rockville when he was 15 years old. In Rockville, he attended the South Side High School from where he graduated in 1972. In the fall of 1972, Stern left New York and enrolled at Boston University where the first hints of his future "shock jock" career would make a showing.

At Boston University, Stern volunteered at the college radio station and got his first taste of the business. After his debut program, a broadcast that included a racially charged skit called "Godzilla Goes to Harlem," Boston University canceled the show. He graduated with a 3.8 GPA and a bachelor's in communications.

Career

Stern started his career as a marketing executive for the New York advertising agency Benton & Bowles. He later joined the creative department of the agency. However, he always knew that he wanted to work at a radio station and hence started looking out for jobs in the entertainment field. He landed a job as a radio salesman from where he worked his way up to handle a four-hour midday shift at the radio station. He later became the station’s production director. Along with his production work, he started engaging in commercials and comedy which made him famous among his listeners.

His first independent show was with the WWWW radio station. Though the station was not doing well, his work was recognized and he went on to win the Billboard Award for Album Oriented Rock Personality of the Year’ in 1980. Despite his best efforts, WWWW failed to achieve popularity and hence Stern had to quit his job. He then went on to host the morning shows of WWDC in Washington, DC.

In August 1982, he began his stint with WNBC and made his debut appearance in the television talk show Late Night with David Letterman. He was also featured in People magazine which increased his popularity. However, he also had differences with the management of WNBC, resulting in the termination of his contract in 1985.

In 1985, Stern was fired, freeing him to eventually sign on with the New York City-based WXRK, better known as K-ROCK. At the new station, Stern took his radio career to new, pioneering heights, confronting two of his favorite subjects - race and sex - in controversial ways. To the surprise of radio executives but not hardcore fans, Stern, seated in the station's morning slot, knocked off WNBC's Don Imus to claim the rating mantle.

A year after his arrival, Stern took the unprecedented step of syndicating his show, allowing him to break into other big markets like Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and eventually Los Angeles, New Orleans, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Dallas, Boston, and Chicago.

Armed with an identifiable and talented on-air team that included Quivers, as well as producer Gary "Baba Booey" Dell'Abate, writer Fred Norris and stand-up comic/writer Jackie "the Jakeman" Martling, Stern proved to be a rating force. By 1993, he was in 14 markets and claimed some 3 million daily listeners.

Much of it was tied to the show's fearless approach. In one memorable instance in 1992, Stern deployed correspondent "Stuttering" John Melendez to a Gennifer Flowers press conference in which she planned to take questions from reporters about her alleged affair with then-Presidential candidate Bill Clinton. To the dismay of his "colleagues" at the event, Melendez didn't hold back, asking Flowers if Clinton practiced safe sex and whether she planned on sleeping with any other candidates.

Stern's popularity was taken to new heights soon after with the release of his autobiography, Private Parts, a detailed, funny look at Stern's life that also served to pay homage to his wife, Alison, and the job she'd done to raise their three daughters, Emily Beth (born 1983), Deborah Jennifer (born 1986) and Ashley Jade (born 1993). With more than 500,000 copies in print in its first month, Private Parts proved to be the fastest-selling book in Simon & Schuster's 70-year publishing history. After taking the top spot on The New York Times best-seller list in October 1993, it remained there for a full month. Stern followed in 1995 with another best-seller, Miss America. In 1997, Private Parts was turned into a successful movie starring Stern himself.

The increased success and salary (by 1995, Stern was reported to be earning $8 million a year from just the radio program), hardly constrained the deejay. Instead, it seemed to only unleash more of the very things that had made him successful. Following the death of Tejano singer Selena, Stern mocked the star by playing gunfire over the performer's music. In addition, Stern went to say that "Spanish people have the worst taste in music," prompting protests and a warrant for his arrest by the justice of the peace in Harlingen, Texas. Stern later apologized for the comments.

Another firestorm erupted in April 1999 when, just one day after the Columbine High School shootings, Stern questioned why the killers didn't try and have sex with some of the girls before they shot them. The Colorado State Legislature issued a censure against the shock jock. Of course, Stern's behavior didn't just catch the attention of the radio-listening public. He also proved to be far from popular with the Federal Communications Commission, too. By 2005, the Federal Communications Commission had levied some $2.5 million in fines against Stern's employers.

The constant scrutiny of his material led Stern in 2004 to sign a five-year, $500 million deal with Sirius Satellite Radio (later Sirius XM Radio), which was not subject to FCC regulations concerning language and content. His first show on satellite radio aired on January 9, 2006, and the relationship proved profitable enough for both parties that Stern re-signed with Sirius on several occasions.

In 2011 Stern replaced Piers Morgan as a judge on the competition show America's Got Talent for its seventh season, joining returning judges Sharon Osbourne and Howie Mandel. Despite his reputation for harshness, Stern proved surprisingly supportive of contestants at times while showcasing his quick wit. He stayed on for four seasons before signing off from America's Got Talent in 2015, where he was replaced by executive producer Simon Cowell.

Achievements

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  Howard Stern brought his signature "shock jock" radio style to New York listeners in 1982, and by 1986 his show went into national syndication. In 1998, he won the Blockbuster Entertainment Award under the Favorite Male Newcomer category for his performance in Private Parts. He won a Special Achievement Award at the 2000 Adult Video News Awards.
  
  He was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2012. In August 2015, Stern was named the highest-paid media personality by Forbes. With $90 million in total earnings, Howard was the 8th highest-paid celebrity of 2020 as per Forbes.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Miss America

    (With chapters about his ongoing battle with the FCC and h...)

    1996
  • Private Parts

    (An autobiography by the original "shock jock" reveals his...)

    1993
  • Howard Stern Comes Again

    (Rock stars and rap gods. Comedy legends and A-list actors...)

    2019

Religion

Stern follows Judaism.

Politics

Stern is a Libertarian and even ran for governor of New York on the Libertarian ticket. Although he didn’t become the Governor, Stern did support the winner, George Pataki. Howard Stern has also admitted to voting for both Republicans and Democrats.

Views

Stern supports North Shore Animal League America. Since 2012, Stern had adopted a pescetarian diet.

Quotations: "I love America. I love our freedom. And nowhere could a guy like me, a schlub like me have success with - where would I get this freedom of speech? They don't allow this anywhere."

"Writing a book just might be the hardest thing I've ever done, besides trying to get laid in college."

"I have a tremendous compassion for people who are homosexuals. I feel that they are bullied and abused in our society... They just treat them so poorly. It must be a terrible thing to be exposed to that kind of hatred and be hated just because of your sexuality."

Personality

As a young adult, Stern was a lifelong Joan Rivers fan, by either watching or listening to her comedy work, long before he met Rivers. He has also highly praised Joan Rivers for his stardom in television production. Stern is also an avid comic book reader, and Superman is his all-time favorite. He also loves Spider-Man and even expressed interest in James Cameron's doomed Spider-Man project when he interviewed him.

Howard Stern has a curiously tame hobby: chess. The radio and TV personality often plays in an online chess club and even says it’s been one of his favorite things to do since he learned the game growing up on Long Island. His ranking is above 1,600, and he took lessons from chess master Dan Heisman.

Howard credits the Transcendental Meditation technique for helping him quit smoking, achieving his goals in radio, and in beating obsessive-compulsive disorder. Howard Stern holds a brown belt in Shotokan karate, a style of martial arts frequently used by UFC fighters.

Interests

• chess

• Politicians

  Hillary Clinton, George Pataki

• Writers

  With the Old Breed by E. B. Sledge, Unbelievable by Katy Tur, Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen, The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, Getting Things Done by David Allen, The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp, The Journey is the Destination: The Journals of Dan Eldon, Cabinet of Curiosities: My Notebooks, Collections, and Other Obsession by Guillermo del Toro

• Artists

  Edward Hopper, John Sell Cotman, Drew Friedman

• Sport & Clubs

  Shotokan Karate

• Music & Bands

  Keith Richards, Motörhead, Mark Harris, Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails

Connections

Stern married his Boston University sweetheart Alison Berns at Temple Ohabei Shalom in Brookline, Massachusetts on 4 June 1978. They have three daughters, namely Emily, Debra, and Ashley. In October 1999, he decided to live separately in an apartment in the Upper West Side of Manhattan due to work pressure. He later settled for an amicable divorce in 2001. In the intervening period, he dated Angie Everhart and Robin Givens. Later, he entered into a relationship with television host and model Beth Ostrosky whom he married in October 2008.

Father:

Ben Stern

Mother:

Ray Stern

Spouse:

Beth Ostrosky

Howard started dating Beth in 2000. Beth is an American actress, model, author, and animal rights activist. After 7 years of dating, Howard announced on his show his engagement to Beth on February 14, 2007. Then on October 3, 2008, they tied the knot at Le Cirque restaurant in New York City.

Daughter:

Deborah Jennifer Stern

Daughter:

Ashley Jade Stern

Daughter:

Emily Beth Stern

ex-spouse:

Alison Berns

Howard met Massachusetts-based actress Alison during his days at the Boston University through a mutual friend. Their friendship grew over time and they tied the knot on June 4, 1978, at the Temple Ohabei Shalom in Brookline, Massachusetts. They had three daughters together, Emily Beth (born in 1983), Debra Jennifer (born in 1986), and Ashley Jade (born in 1993). In October 1999, they started living separately owing to Howard’s workaholic lifestyle. Finally, in 2001, they divorced with an amicable settlement.

Acquaintance:

Miley Cyrus

Acquaintance:

Ellen DeGeneres

Acquaintance:

Jay Leno

Friend:

Donald Trump

References

• Howard Stern on Instagram