ON THE RECORD - CATHERINE LANE

For 40 years, Catherine Lane was a familiar voice on Charlotte radio. Her career included stops at Kiss 102 and EZ 102.9 before her long run at Country 103.7 WSOC-FM, where she spent 27 years hosting middays while also becoming part of Tanner in the Morning.

That chapter came to a close June 19 when Lane, Rob Tanner and Chris Allen retired from their day-to-day roles at WSOC-FM after 22 years together in mornings. During their run, the team earned 17 ACM and CMA Award nominations and won two ACM Awards.

For Lane, who grew up in Shelby, North Carolina, a career in radio wasn’t something she had planned. She arrived at Western Carolina University on a partial nursing scholarship. Her mother was a pediatric RN, and her sister worked as an RN in the neonatal intensive care unit in Charlotte.

“I loved taking care of people and I thought nursing was my path,” Lane said. “Unfortunately, let’s just say, I’m not math and science brained.”

Then an RA on her hall suggested she check out the campus radio station. They put her on the air, and almost immediately, she knew she had found something that felt right.

“It was like breathing,” Lane said. “The general manager came in afterwards and said, ‘You’re a natural.’ I changed majors the next day.”

What started almost by accident turned into two years in college radio followed by 40 years in commercial broadcasting. Along the way, Lane built a relationship with Charlotte listeners by sharing much more than what was on the station playlist.

“I was 100 percent authentic and I shared EVERYTHING with them,” she said.

That meant talking about her faith, wanting to lose weight and the everyday ups and downs of family life. She remembers telling listeners about the time her daughter came home crying because another child had put a worm in her hair. But she also talked about the harder parts of life and didn’t shy away from being personal when things weren’t going well.

Lane was also there when the entire Charlotte area was going through something together. She was on the air during Hurricane Hugo, ice storms and other major events when local radio became especially important.

“When something was happening locally, people could count on us being there, right there with them,” she said, “getting through it together or celebrating it together.”

Lane also recalls becoming Charlotte’s first solo female morning host in the mid-1990s. She hosted mornings on her own at EZ 102.9 for several years before later teaming up with Ken Conrad. Other on-air partners during her career included Jon Robinson and Paul Franklin.

Her longest partnership came at Country 103.7 with Rob Tanner, Chris Allen and longtime traffic reporter Captain Jim on Tanner in the Morning. Lane believes the show lasted as long as it did because the friendship and chemistry listeners heard every morning were genuine.

“I think it worked because we truly clicked, love each other and make each other laugh like crazy,” she said.

Listeners often told Lane they laughed and cried right along with the show and felt like they were part of it. She says that wasn’t the result of trying to manufacture moments for the radio.

“Nothing on our show was manufactured, no prefabbed bit.”

The years brought plenty of memorable experiences, including interviews with country stars and national recognition. But when Lane talks about what made the show special, she comes back to something much more basic.

“The greatest things about us are love, laughter and locally based content.”

That belief in local radio hasn’t changed, even as the business around it has. Lane watched technology, programming and listening habits change considerably over four decades. Today, radio personalities aren’t limited to what comes out of the speakers. They’re also creating content for Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and other platforms.

But Lane believes there’s still one thing technology can’t replace.

“You can’t duplicate live local people,” she said. “That is something that AI will never be able to do.”

For Lane, it’s the people behind the microphones who continue to make the difference — people who live in the same communities as their listeners and care about many of the same things.

“Live local people that live near you and care about what you care about,” she said.

Throughout her career, Lane brought plenty of her own life to the air. She talked about being a wife, mother and grandmother, her love of country living and fishing, and some very difficult experiences as well.

She shared her struggles with having a premature child and the death of a child. Looking back, Lane hopes talking openly about those experiences may have helped someone else who was struggling.

“I hope I gave people hope that you can find a way to live through anything,” she said.

After 40 years on Charlotte radio, that’s a big part of how Lane hopes listeners remember her.

“I hope people remember that no matter what, I showed up and was right there with them,” she said. “That can be for happy events or sad.”

She wants them to remember the laughter, too, along with how she kept the three guys she worked with “in line and on track,” as she jokingly put it. And after building a career in an industry that looked much different for women when she started, Lane hopes she set a good example for other women, both in broadcasting and outside of it.

Some of the compliments that have meant the most to her haven’t been about ratings, awards or anything that happened inside a radio studio. They’ve come from listeners who felt they knew her personally.

“It’s the greatest honor when people say, ‘I feel like we could be best friends,’” Lane said. “There’s no higher honor or compliment than that.”

Now retired, Lane says she’s enjoying it more than she ever imagined she would. She’s also said she hopes to spend more time working in suicide prevention.

When she thinks about what she wants to leave behind after all those years on the air, though, it comes down to something pretty simple.

“I hope somewhere in those 40 years I’ve helped someone.”

Maybe that happened through a nonprofit she supported, something from her own life that she shared on the radio or content she created online. Whatever the case, Lane hopes people know “there is help and hope no matter what they are going through.”

And there’s one part of her story that some Charlotte listeners may not know.

Before they knew Catherine Lane, some knew her as Willa on Kiss 102.

As it turns out, Willa wasn’t a made-up radio name.

“Willa is my name,” she said.

Lane later changed the name she used on the air because of problems with a stalker. That’s no longer something she’s worried about, and these days, either name works just fine.

“You can call me Willa or Catherine,” she joked, “just don’t call me late for supper.”