Longtime radio DJ welcomes wife as new morning co-host

IDAHO FALLS – Josh Tielor stands behind the mic and cues up the board as he greets the listener on the other end of the phone.

The 40-year-old Idaho Falls man is the host of Wake Up Classy 97 weekday mornings from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. on KLCE, a gig he started about a year ago. And beginning Monday morning, he’ll welcome his 17-year life partner as his new on-air partner.

In a conversation with EastIdahoNews.com, Josh says he’s thrilled to share the airwaves with his wife, Chantel.

“Being able to live our life and share our stories, our family, and our relationship with other people is something that we’re both really looking forward to,” Josh says.

Josh has been working in local radio for the last 21 years, but his interest in broadcasting goes back much further. He remembers being fascinated with it as an 11-year-old kid and wanting to be part of it.

“The construction of it, the little intricacies of talking into a microphone and hearing it instantly in your ears,” Josh says of his love for radio. “There are so many fascinating elements that radio inspired me to pursue at a very young age.”

Throughout his teenage and young adult years, making it on the radio was the motivating factor in his life.

He has fond memories of listening to the High Five at Nine on Z103 and using his duel deck cassette recorder and karaoke machine to create his own radio show at home.

After graduating from Skyline High School in 2000, he attended the Academy of Radio Broadcasting in Phoenix, Arizona. He began his radio career at Rich Broadcasting in Idaho Falls in 2001, where he worked as a DJ on 94.9 FM and 98.1 FM.

It was during this time that Josh met Chantel through a mutual acquaintance.

“We met through a woman that he worked with. She had tickets to a concert at the Eastern Idaho State Fair,” Chantel says. “We met up at the fair together, and he had pictures of his girlfriend all over his car.”

But it didn’t take long for the two of them to click, and they quickly became a couple.

Chantel has done some radio voice work on commercials over the years, but this is her first full-time on-air job. And Chantel says it was not something she was seeking.

“I was a guest host one day, and it was very well received. (Josh’s) boss said ‘I’d like to see more of that. Let’s have dinner and discuss it,’ and he offered me a job,” says Chantel.

Chantel is excited about the opportunity, and the fact that she gets to host a show with her husband is an added bonus.

Riffing Josh is what she’s most excited about.

“As a wife, … I get to (pick on) my husband a little bit. We also like each other, so I’m excited to spend our mornings together,” she says.

Josh is equally excited and says it will be a fun show with a fresh angle on different topics with lots of “back and forth banter.”

“I represent one half of the world and she represents the other half and so it will be nice to have … that back and forth banter again. I think that’s really important to a successful show,” he says.

Wake Up Classy 97 with Josh and Chantel is available on 97.3 FM or online.