A smile in the morning, with a little help from ‘habajeeba’

Saying good morning comes in many versions.

The French have “bonjour.”

For the Klingons of Star Trek, it’s “maj po.”

And Robin Williams put his own spin on it with “Good morning, Vietnam!”

But Brian Gary and Todd Harding simply greet listeners with “habajeeba.”

OK, so habajeeba is the term the radio disc jockeys use strictly on Fridays, but still, Gary and Harding have been greeting morning listeners from 5-10 a.m. on K99 FM radio for two decades. And without habajeeba, those listeners may be lost.

The “Good Morning Guys,” as they’re known, have been entertaining Windsor and the surrounding area’s listeners for 20 years, and although it wook awhile to warm up to each other, it doesn’t appear they are going anywhere anytime soon.

The pair started out as part-time employees at the station. Harding, 41, worked overnight and did the sports on the morning show, and Gary, 42, worked nights. New ownership stepped in, and Harding began doing news in the morning. Soon after, Harding’s first partner left, and Gary landed the job.

“It really was kind of by accident,” Harding said. “Kind of by default. We didn’t really plan to be together.”

And the “accident” continues, the two men say jokingly.

“They threw us together, and it was just one of those things,” Gary said with his trademark laugh. “We were probably fired I don’t know how many times the first five or 10 years.”

But sticking together through it all, they can now finish each other’s sentences.

“We accidentally got together in the beginning — ” Harding began.

“ — and we accidentally got good,” Gary finished. “We got better by the time they could let us go. Suddenly people started to get us, and suddenly it started to work. Now 20 years later, it’s just awesome.”

And now, people all over the country “get them.”

In 2004, they were the Greeley Stampede Independence Day Parade marshals.

For the past two years, K99 and the Good Morning Guys have been nominated as medium market station of the year and best morning show by the Academy of Country Music.

On March 15, at the Colorado Broadcasters Association Awards of Excellence, they were named best morning show in a major market for 2007.

That’s a lot of accolades for two guys who never thought they’d work well together.

“When we first started together, we did not like each other. Brian’s the reason I’m on high blood pressure medication,” Harding said with a laugh. “We really didn’t mesh at first. We thought it wouldn’t work. We are very different. I keep everything inside, and he bursts like a volcano. We couldn’t be more different. I bring to the show what he doesn’t. He brings to the show what I don’t.”

Harding first expressed interest in broadcasting in high school, where he wanted to be on television. But when he got into college, he said he realized it was too scripted. He didn’t like how structured it was. He took a mass communications class at Northeastern Junior College in Sterling and a commercial he recorded there got the attention of a radio station and landed him his first job.

“It’s an unorthodox way to get a job in radio,” he said. “But that’s really how I started.”
When he came to Colorado State University, he applied at K99 and didn’t go away until they hired him.

After spending some time in college, Gary went to work for a record store and did some stand-up comedy before going to a broadcasting school in Minneapolis. He then worked an overnight shift in North Dakota for a few months and then moved here, where he landed his first job at KIMN radio in Fort Collins. But the program director there said he sounded too perky and too much like the KIMN’s competition — KUAD, now K99. So after one shift, he applied at KUAD and got a part-time job.

“This has been the coolest thing in the world,” Gary said. “That after all these years, it’s still so much fun. You get up and you have a blast. It’s new. It’s fun. Every day, there’s something different for the 20 years working with (Harding) and Susan (Moore).

Moore delivers the morning news during the show.

“The seven years she’s been with us, things just took off, and it helped us reach another level. ... The three of us have a bond that any one of us would take a bullet for the other person. It’s that kind of respect that we all bring to the show,” Gary said.

The success of the program is driven by such things as habajeeba, a word meaning “woo hoo” that Gary and his friends created long before the Good Morning Guys show; the 28 Hours of Hope, a fundraiser for children’s charities in Weld and Larimer counties, which this year raised more than $106,000 and featured more than 35 national recording artists; and Guess What the Chicken’s Clucking, a weekly special where Harding clucks the tune to a song and the listener who correctly guesses the song wins a prize package to Jim’s Wings in Fort Collins.

Gary and Harding also credit their brand of humor for keeping them fresh with their listeners, dubbing it the school bus rule, where they always assume there is a child around when parents are listening to the radio.

“We may throw an innuendo and let you do that yourself, but I’m never going to do it,” Gary said. “I may give you all the bait in the world, and you might think I’m right on that line, but that’s only because you took it. I’m never going to do anything you have to explain to your kids.”

That love of children is only one of the traits that make Gary a hit with the listeners, Harding said.

“When you go to the Greeley Stampede, walking with Brian is like walking with Elvis,” Harding said. “Honestly, you cannot get across the Stampede grounds. If you have to be somewhere in 15 minutes, you better leave 30 minutes ahead of time because everyone will stop Brian and talk to him. They love him. I don’t look as approachable because I don’t have that constant infectious smile. He has a laughter and a smile that is really infectious. I have a more stern look. Even though I’m stern on the outside, I’m fuzzy on the inside.”

Although the duo has no idea what their future holds, they do know they are happy where they are.

“We honestly have no desire to go anywhere else,” Gary said. “Sure, we’d love to be rich and all, and we’d love if that would happen here. But to have been here from Day 1, and to have built this — people work their whole lives to travel around and find this job — once you can get up every morning and not dread going to work, like going to work — I hate taking vacations and leaving this job — if you can reach that, why would you change? You’re not going to find that anywhere else. We love this community. We have had that rare opportunity to grow up on the air with this area. The nation sees northern Colorado as its own market now. We were always a part of Denver before. And we feel proud that we’ve helped establish that identity — radio wise — for this area. It’s just been phenomenal.”