Big Dan Ingram, a favorite at KBOX in 1959 and 1960, has died at 83
If you’ve been in Lake Highlands long enough, you’re sure to remember the KBOX radio station at Audelia and McCree and legendary DJ Big Dan Ingram, who spun discs there in 1959 and 1960. Daniel Trombley Ingram died Sunday at 83.
Ingram was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2007 after a lengthy career spent mostly in his native New York. He began his five decade broadcasting career at small stations in New York and Connecticut and was responsible for big ratings jumps when he moved to KBOX-Dallas then WIL-St. Louis. He hosted CBS Radio’s “Top 40 Satellite Survey” and “The Weekend Music Review,” a 3-hour show syndicated from Dallas.
Ingram was known for oft-repeated unique turns-of-phrase, including times, during weather forecasts, when he would warn a “chance of brief showers – watch out for those briefs.” He would declare, “Big Dan here, laughin’ and scratchin’,” and say his show “might start off slow, but you can be guaranteed it’ll slump off from there.” After playing a pre-recorded commercial which he had voiced, he would say, “thank you, me!”
Dan closed his show regularly with “Jeg elsker deg,” a Norwegian expression meaning, “I love you.” It was a shout-out to his Norwegian wife, Anita Strand Schonbrunn Ingram (1927-2014). They divorced in 1974.
