July 1999 Advocate, featuring The Ticket's Mike Rhyner

July 1999 Advocate, featuring The Ticket’s Mike Rhyner

The billboards started appearing late in 1993. They promised loneliness and heartache for wives throughout the Metroplex. And, then, in January 1994 — it happened. KTCK, The Ticket, went on the air and a cry (a sort of primitive “whoop whoop” sound) was heard throughout the land as all-sports, all-talk radio hit the airwaves …

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That was the lede from our in-depth Q&A with Mike Rhyner, founder of The Ticket 1310 sports radio station, in our July 1999 issue. The article ran in the Lake Highlands Advocate and the Lakewood Advocate. (Rhyner used to live in the White Rock area and grew up in Oak Cliff, so we did a brand new interview with him for that magazine a couple years back.)

Mike Rhyner pull quote from the June 1999 Advocate.

Mike Rhyner pull quote from the July 1999 Advocate.

Now here we are today, some 17 years later, The Ticket in its year 22, and Rhyner is still going strong. With his buddies Corby Davidson, a Lake Highlands resident, and Danny Balis, an East Dallas resident, at his side, his show, the Hardline, rules the afternoon drive time airwaves. Longtime listeners feel part of a perpetual inside joke that leaves the rest of the world wide-eyed, wrinkling noses and shaking heads.

Here’s what Rhyner has to say today about that decades-old Q&A: “This is unquestionably the most extensive, in-depth interview I have ever done (not that it’s something that happens every day—it doesn’t)…I’d forgotten just how directed, focused, and finely honed some of the questions were…and how idiotic some of my answers were…would love a do-over on a lot of this.”

In fact, the annual Ticketstock takes place today and tomorrow at the Irving Convention Center. You can meet Rhynes and the rest there.

As you will read if you click the below link, while much has changed since the 1999 story, some things never will.

Read “That’s The Ticket” in full here.

Inside spread of the 1999 article.

A contemplative Rhyner in 1999.