McPherson native Lucky Kidd celebrates 35 years of broadcasting and his first KAB Award of Excellence.
For decades, locals have heard the familiar catch phrase: I’m Lucky Kiiidd.
He’s the man behind countless newscasts, weather updates, and sports broadcasts.
On Oct. 6, 2025, Lucky earned his first Award of Excellence from the Kansas Association of Broadcasters in his 35 years of broadcasting.
“We compete with some very strong radio stations around Kansas,” he said.
Lucky received second place in the Complete Newscast category for small-market radio with his submission for 99.3/1370 KIOL. “To get a second-place award on really what was our first entry—I think that was pretty impressive. And the fact that it’s my first KAB award and competing with who we have to compete with in that category… That says a lot.”
Lucky credited Dusty Deines, Ad Astra Radio Sports and Production Manager for getting the staff to enter more submissions to the KAB awards program this year.
From the Bug to the Booth
Edward Lucky Kidd was born in Salina and spent his early years there. For about three years, his family lived in Lawrence and in 1973 moved to McPherson.
Lucky first felt the pull to radio when he was little and saw local legend Bob Hapgood doing a live broadcast at Gibson’s which is now where Genesis Health Clubs is in McPherson.
At the time, broadcasters set up their equipment and played records right from the remote according to Kidd.
“I saw him do that remote broadcast, and that’s what gave me the radio bug,” Lucky said.
The very microphone Lucky uses every day may very well be the same one Hapgood used during his broadcast career, a significant link to the moment that started it all.
After graduating from McPherson High School in 1979, Lucky landed his first paid radio job at KNEX in McPherson. He went on to study at Hutchinson Community College, then caught his first full-time break at a station in Pratt, Kansas —a 5,000-watt operation that Kidd fondly compares to Ted Baxter’s fictional Fresno station from The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
“It was five thousand watts by day and five hundred by night, and very directional,” Lucky said. “We had no signal going east.”
Building a Career Across Kansas
Lucky joined KWLS in 1990, which was part of the Larry Steckline group, where he helped originate programs and managed weekend broadcasts. He was with KWLS for seven years. Then stayed on with the next company after Steckline sold the radio stations around 2006 – 2007.
Over the next several years, moved between Pratt, Liberal, Dodge City, and Great Bend.
At one point, he oversaw a Spanish-language station in Liberal despite not speaking Spanish. “I speak no Spanish, by the way,” he joked.
During his years in western Kansas, Lucky helped expand radio coverage of the state track meet, the second largest in the nation. The guy who started Pratt in on it was none other than the voice of the Kansas City Chiefs, Mitch Holthus. He started his broadcast career down at Pratt and then went on to WIBW, then the K-State Radio Network, and finally the Chiefs.
By the late 1990s, Lucky had become a trusted voice. In 1999, he returned to central Kansas to join Ad Astra Radio as News Director.
“I’ve been their news director ever since,” Lucky said. “Back in ’99, we were just three stations.”
Over the years, that network grew dramatically. Stations were added in Hutchinson, McPherson, Larned, and Iola, expanding Kidd’s responsibilities far beyond any single market. At one point, he was producing or voicing newscasts for eleven stations.
For two years, all newscasts came out of McPherson.
“Charlie Morris handled mornings and mid-days for Hutchinson, Larned, and McPherson,” Lucky said. “I did Afternoon Drive for all the stations, plus Morning Drive and mid-day for Iola.”
In June of 2025, Ad Astra Radio hired a new addition to the news team, Kaitlyn Mauro to oversee the Hutchinson and Larned markets, which made life “a little less hectic” for Lucky, allowing him to focus primarily on the McPherson and Iola markets while overseeing public affairs and FCC compliance for the entire company.
Lucky’s name has long been associated with news and severe weather coverage, and his reliable delivery has guided listeners through countless storms. Though he’s scaled back on live sports coverage, he still handles halftime updates and Saturday sportscasts across multiple markets.
Yet radio has given Lucky more than deadlines and broadcasts—it’s given him stories.
Memorable Moments
Ask Lucky Kidd about memorable moments, and he’ll offer more than a few.
On Sept. 11, 2006, he won a hot dog eating contest at the Kansas State Fair 2006.
The Fair had arranged the contest with Dillon’s, featuring Nathan’s Hot Dogs – the hot dog associated with Coney Island. “Somebody they had picked to be in that contest couldn’t do it,” Kidd said. “So I got brought in and ended up being the individual winner of that contest.”
Or the time he was on the second place team in the Fair’s goat-milking contest.
In 2018, Lucky had his “urban adventure” and repelled down the side of the First National Bank building in downtown Hutchinson. “It was quite the thrill actually,” he stated.
This adventure reminded him of one in 1997, when he flew with the U.S. Army Golden Knights Parachute Team, watching them leap from an open C-130 plane over Liberal.
At that time, Liberal was a really big football power and had a legendary year under coach Gary Cornelsen, and the school had perhaps, an even more legendary year for track and field, which was something that Lucky got to cover doing while at the Pratt stations.
Sports have given Lucky his share of excitement, calling state championship games, including Kansas’s first official six-man football championship and numerous basketball, baseball and softball tournaments. He’s covered two USGA Championships at Prairie Dunes Country Club, including the 2002 US Women’s Open and 2006 US Senior Open.
Lucky recalls seeing Greensburg play at a sub-state basketball game just a year after the Greensburg tornado.
“I wasn’t really broadcasting, but I happened to be there when it happened, because Little River girls had played in a 1A sub-state game championship with Larned, which they won and went to state,” he said.
Greensburg played against Rolla, as Lucky remembers, in the boys championship of sub state. When Lucky worked in Pratt, he covered a lot of area sports, which meant a number of Greensburg games, both football and basketball. He felt a deeper connection to the Greensburg community because of that.
Meeting the World
Lucky’s career has brought him face-to-face with several notable people. Through the Dillon Lecture Series in Hutchinson, he’s met national figures from journalist Bob Schieffer to Nobel Peace Prize winner and former president of Poland, Lech Wałęsa.
One of his claims to fame is that he interviewed a key player in what was once a world-changing deal. “I got the rare opportunity to ask questions to Mikhail Gorbachev when he visited Lindsborg,” Lucky said.
Gorbachev had been visiting as part of a Chess for Peace initiative. Gorbachev participated in a chess parade and attended a match between world champions Anatoly Karpov and Susan Polgar.
Lucky has also interviewed Miss America 1997 Tara Holland.
“Pratt is the smallest city in the country to host the state finals for the Miss America Pageant,” Lucky said. “I got to interview her [Tara Holland] when she came back to Kansas to do her homecoming.”
In addition, Lucky has also spoken with cabinet secretaries, and covered everything from local politics to national events. “I haven’t visited with the president yet,” he said, adding, “but maybe someday.”
Coming Full Circle
In 2022, Ad Astra Radio purchased KBBE and KNGL in McPherson— where Lucky’s radio career began decades earlier. He has since run his operations from the studios there.
“It was good timing for me personally,” Lucky said. “Both my parents were dealing with some rather severe health problems which got worse in the latter part of 2022 and lost both of them in the early part of 2023.”
Now based once again in his hometown, Lucky continues to lend his voice to the communities that have long trusted him. The award from the Kansas Association of Broadcasters is a milestone, but for Lucky Kidd, it’s more of a reflection than a finish line.
“I’ve had a lot of experiences,” Lucky said. “Too many to mention,” he said. “It’s been a fun ride, and I’m planning to continue doing it as long as my health holds out, which I think will be a while yet.”
In an industry shaped by change, Lucky Kidd remains what he’s always been: a storyteller, a steady voice, and a bridge between Kansas’s past and its ever-moving present.
