{"id":610619,"date":"2026-08-31T23:06:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T23:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/610619\/"},"modified":"2026-08-31T23:06:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T23:06:08","slug":"after-four-decades-wlavs-michelle-mckormick-signs-off-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/610619\/","title":{"rendered":"After Four Decades, WLAV\u2019s Michelle McKormick Signs Off. | Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michelle McKormick, a mainstay of Grand Rapids, MI radio since 1984, signed off on Friday, Aug. 28 after 15 years co-hosting mornings on Cumulus Media classic rock WLAV (96.9).<\/p>\n

The Grand Rapids native spent her final hours on air reminiscing about her broadcasting career with co-host Travis Gibbs, and taking calls from friends and listeners. \u201cI’m not going to say ‘stay tuned’ or ‘manifest’ or ‘journey,’ but, stay tuned, I’m manifesting my journey,\u201d she said near the show\u2019s end.<\/p>\n

McKormick got her first on-air job, at Grand Rapids\u2019 WGRD-FM, while still attending Central Michigan University. Over the years she also worked locally at news\/talk WOOD-AM and WJRW-AM, with time spent outside the market at then-talk station \u201cFM Talk 97.1\u201d WKRK-FM Detroit and \u201cNew Jersey 101.5\u201d WKXW Trenton, NJ.<\/p>\n

Looking back on her career, McKormick tells WZZM-TV<\/a>, \u201cIt’s a business now. You have to have business sense. So, if you want to be a broadcaster, you have to know your worth, and you have to be able to be flexible, because it’s a digital world.\u201d At the same time, she notes, \u201cIn every other way, it really hasn’t [changed]. The reason morning shows are so fun and silly and goofy are because when you wake up in the morning, you want to know the world’s okay, and that’s my job, to let you know the world’s okay.\u201d<\/p>\n

McKormick also shared stories of the celebrities she\u2019s met over the years, including Gwen Stefani, Johnny Cash, Robin Williams and David Bowie. \u201cBowie said to me, ‘You have the most amazing eyes I’ve ever seen,'” she says, \u201cand he kept walking.\u201d<\/p>\n

McKormick announced her departure from WLAV on air Aug. 17. \u201cAbout two weeks ago, our company made some changes and they had to eliminate some jobs,\u201d she said. \u201cMine was one of them that was eliminated.\u201d<\/p>\n

McKormick says she would like to continue her on-air career in some way. \u201cI don’t know that I’m done in radio yet, or in broadcasting yet, but I will miss that,\u201d she says. \u201cThanks to everybody in West Michigan, you’ve been so kind.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michelle McKormick, a mainstay of Grand Rapids, MI radio since 1984, signed off on Friday, Aug. 28 after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":610620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,710,61,60,278,43],"class_list":["post-610619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-free","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/610620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}