1954–present
Howard Stern News: Radio Host Returns After Weeks of Cancellation Rumors
Howard Stern isn’t leaving his longtime radio show after all. Following weeks of speculation about his contract with Sirius XM, the radio host returned from summer hiatus on September 8 to confirm that The Howard Stern Show will remain on the air.
Before addressing the rumors, however, Stern played a prank on his audience, in which Andy Cohen took to the microphone to claim he was taking over Stern’s time slot. Shortly after Cohen’s bit, 71-year-old Stern revealed it was all a joke.
Stern explained he pulled the gag because he was “annoyed” with all the rumors about his contract negations with Sirius XM. He went on to criticize the inaccurate reports that he had been “fired for being too woke” and lamented the concerned messages he received as a result. “None of it is true, zero truth,” Stern said on-air.
Still, he decided to lean into the speculation, crafting a promo that promised to clear up the allegations when his show returned this month. The Howard Stern Show was expected to be back September 2 but was delayed a week, casting further doubt on the radio host’s future. When he did return, he shared he was sick this past week.
“What pisses me off is that now I can’t leave,” Stern joked. “I’ve been thinking about retiring. Now I can’t.”
Although the shock jock’s contract with the satellite radio network is still in the negotiation phase, he affirmed that he’s “very happy at Sirius.”
Who Is Howard Stern?
Radio personality Howard Stern is known for his controversial broadcasts on his long-running program The Howard Stern Show. The New York native brought his signature “shock jock” radio style to New York listeners in 1982 and, by 1986, his show went into national syndication. Repeated fines and interference from the FCC eventually drove the self-proclaimed “King of All Media” to satellite radio in 2004. He aired his first episode on Sirius XM in January 2006. Stern has also written multiple best-selling books and served as a judge on the TV competition show America’s Got Talent.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Howard Allan Stern
BORN: January 12, 1954
BIRTHPLACE: New York, New York
SPOUSES: Alison Berns (1978–2001) and Beth Ostrosky Stern (2008–present)
CHILDREN: Ashley, Emily, and Deborah
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Capricorn
Early Life
Howard Allan Stern was born on January 12, 1954, in New York City. He is the younger of Ray and Ben Stern’s two children and spent the early part of his youth in the mile-square town of Roosevelt, Long Island.
Stern’s early taste for radio and recording seems to have been inherited from his father, Ben. The part-owner of a recording studio frequently taped his son and daughter on the holidays. Sometimes short-fused, Ben 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,” Ben recalled. “And so I got mad and said, ‘Shut up and sit down. Don’t be stupid, you moron.’”
Stern showed an early love of performance as well as the outrageous. In the basement of the family’s Roosevelt home, he frequently put together elaborate puppet shows for his friends. The performances had come at the urging of his mother, Ray, but Howard quickly gave them his own twist. He named his act The Perverted Marionette Show, and his puppets more than lived up to the title. “I took something so innocent and beautiful and really just ruined it,” Stern said. “My parents weren’t privy to the dirty performances. My friends would beg me for puppet shows.”
Stern’s love for attention was coupled by his outsider status. In the largely Black community of Roosevelt, the white Stern had trouble fitting in. Over the years, Stern has referred to a rough childhood that saw him the target of periodic school fights. He once shared that one of his best friends, who was Black, was beaten up for hanging out with him.
In 1969, the Sterns moved to Rockville Centre, a largely white community that seemed completely alien to the 15-year-old high school student. “It wasn’t any better in Rockville Centre,” Stern wrote in his 1993 best-selling autobiography, Private Parts. “I couldn’t adjust at all. I was totally lost in a white community. I felt like Tarzan when they got him out of Africa and brought him back to England.” Howard navigated his high school years by staying close with a few buddies, playing poker, and enjoying ping-pong.
In the fall of 1972, Stern left New York to attend Boston University, where the first hints of his future “shock jock” career made a showing. Stern volunteered at the college radio station and got his first taste of the business. His hosting days were short-lived. After his debut program, a broadcast that included a racially charged skit called “Godzilla Goes to Harlem,” BU canceled the show.
Fittingly, Stern decided to pursue a communications degree. He tallied a 3.8 GPA and, with his bachelor’s in hand, immediately set out to begin his professional radio career.
Radio Career
Stern’s first gig came at a small radio station in Briarcliff Manor, New York. Eventually, it dawned on Stern that he would forever be relegated to a life of mediocrity if he continued on as a straight DJ. “So I started to mess around,” he said. “It was unheard-of to mix talking on the phone with playing music. It was outrageous. It was blasphemy.” But it was exactly what Stern wanted to do. So the DJ moved to Hartford, Connecticut, and then Detroit. When the Michigan station changed its format to country and western, Stern fled to Washington, D.C.
In D.C., Stern made significant career inroads. He met Robin Quivers, a newswoman and former U.S. Air Force nurse, who became a part of the Stern radio team. Stern also began developing a reputation for his wild antics. In January 1982, following the crashing of an Air Florida flight into the 14th Street Bridge in D.C., Stern got on the phone and called the airline. “What’s the price of a one-way ticket from National Airport to the 14th Street Bridge?” he asked. “Is that going to be a regular stop?”
Later that year, Stern moved back to New York City after he accepted a job with the now-defunct WNBC-AM. But trouble awaited before he even got behind the microphone, as his new—and apparently nervous—bosses handed the DJ a long list of orders. The list prohibited Stern from using “jokes or sketches relating to personal tragedies” as well as “slander, defamation or personal attacks on private individuals or organizations unless they have consented or are a part of the act.”
At first, the neutered Stern tried to play nice and follow the station’s mandates, but within a short time, the DJ openly went to war against the station. He began showcasing bits like “Sexual Innuendo Wednesday” and “Mystery Whiz,” in which listeners tried to guess who was going to the bathroom. In 1985, Stern was fired, freeing him to eventually sign on with WXRK, another New York City station better known as K-ROCK.
The Howard Stern Show
At the new station, Stern took his radio career to new, pioneering heights as he confronted two of his favorite subjects—race and sex—in controversial ways. To the surprise of radio executives but not hardcore fans, Stern knocked off WNBC’s Don Imus to claim the ratings mantle for the morning slot. A year after his arrival, Stern took the unprecedented step of syndicating his show, allowing him to break into other big markets like Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. Eventually, listeners could tune in from Los Angeles, New Orleans, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Dallas, Boston, and Chicago.
Armed with an identifiable and talented on-air team that included Robin Quivers as well as producer Gary “Baba Booey” Dell’Abate, writer Fred Norris, and stand-up comic and writer Jackie “the Jokeman” Martling, Stern proved to be a ratings force. By 1993, he was in 14 markets and claimed some 3 million daily listeners.
Much of it was tied to The Howard Stern 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, though, is a lesson in contrasts. For all his bravado and wild behavior, he is by his own admission an insecure person, whose self-deprecating humor factors greatly into his show. “Maybe it was the way I was raised, or something, but I always feel like I’m garbage,” he told The New Yorker in 1997. “I think what it comes down to, and maybe this is a personality flaw again, a character flaw, but I could go to a book signing and see twenty thousand people out there and I don’t feel great from that. Which is a shame. You’d think that that kind of adulation would make you feel on top of the world. And yet I don’t. I don’t know why.”
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 DJ. Instead, it seemed to 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 her 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 FCC, too. By 2005, the FCC had levied some $2.5 million in fines against Stern’s employers.
In early 2004, Clear Channel, then the country’s largest radio station chain, pulled the plug on Stern after an especially contentious show that saw the use of a racial slur from a call-in listener and featured Rick Solomon, Paris Hilton’s ex-boyfriend and the man involved in her infamous sex video, describing in detail his relationship with the famous socialite. The resulting fines and the further fights with the FCC over control of his show set the stage for Stern to leave terrestrial radio for good. In 2005, he signed a $500 million deal with Sirius Satellite Radio. He began broadcasting exclusively on the subscription-based radio service on January 9, 2006.
Freed from the constraints of FCC rules, Stern’s show took his shock jock formula into new territory. It also made him wildly wealthy. Stern helped catapult satellite radio’s popularity, creating a financial windfall outside of his contract. In 2005, Sirius boasted 2.2 million new subscribers, a 190 percent increase from the previous year. The better than expected numbers netted Stern roughly $200 million in Sirius stock.
Stern, who said that his final 10 years under the FCC made him “hate” going to work, sounded refreshed after making the move to satellite and signed on for another five years in 2010. But it hasn’t all been smooth sailing for the satellite radio giant. He engaged in a legal battle with Sirius, which merged with satellite rival XM in 2008, over stock rewards in 2010. He claimed that the company owed his production company and his agent $330 million. A judge threw out the suit in 2012, and Stern also lost the appeal.
Books
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. 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 bestseller list in October 1993, it remained there for a full month.
Stern followed in 1995 with another bestseller, Miss America. In 1997, Private Parts was turned into a successful movie starring Stern himself.
The DJ released his third book, Howard Stern Comes Again, in May 2019. A memoir, the book also contained collections of some his best interviews over the years, including those with Trump.
America’s Got Talent Judge
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 on the radio, Stern proved surprisingly supportive of contestants at times while showcasing his quick wit. He stayed on for four seasons before signing off from AGT in 2015, where he was replaced by executive producer Simon Cowell.
Wife and Daughters
Stern is married to model and actor Beth Ostrosky. They first met a party where Ostrosky was on a blind date at the time. After seven years of dating, the couple got married in October 2008 at a New York City restaurant in Manhattan. The guest list included longtime friends Barbara Walters, Billy Joel, John Stamos, Joan Rivers, Donald Trump, and Sarah Silverman. They later remarried on an episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show in October 2019, with Colton Underwood of The Bachelor officiating.
Before he wed Ostrosky, Stern was married to Alison Berns, whom he met at Boston University when he cast her in a student film on transcendental meditation. They exchanged vows in 1978 and went on to have three daughters together: Emily, born in 1983; Deborah, born in 1986; and Ashley, born in 1993. Stern and Berns divorced in 2001.
Net Worth
As of August 2025, Stern has an estimated net worth of $650 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth.
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Catherine Caruso joined the Biography.com staff in August 2024, having previously worked as a freelance journalist for several years. She is a graduate of Syracuse University, where she studied English literature. When she’s not working on a new story, you can find her reading, hitting the gym, or watching too much TV.
