Saying Goodbye to Kiss 95.1: Roy Remembers the Fun, Friendship and a Lot of Crazy Ideas

Saying Goodbye to Kiss 95.1: Roy Brown Remembers the Fun, Friendship and a Lot of Crazy Ideas

By Johnny Caudle | Caudle Media | October 1, 2026

Kiss 95.1 is officially gone from Charlotte’s radio dial.

Wednesday night, the station that spent 30 years playing pop music on 95.1 FM gave way to K-LOVE, bringing the Kiss era at WNKS to an end.

But even though the station is gone, there are still plenty of stories left to tell.

As we continue saying goodbye to Kiss 95.1, I’ve been reaching out to some of the people who were part of the station over the years and asking them what they remember. For former morning personality Roy Brown, it’s hard to separate his memories of Kiss from two people who became much more than coworkers.

“I worked with Maney and LauRen from 2015 to 2022, and they’re still two of my closest friends today,” Roy told me.

The three were brought together at Kiss in 2015, and what became the Maney, Roy and LauRen Show would spend years waking up Charlotte. When Roy eventually left in 2022, there was no radio drama behind the departure.

“Leaving them was strange because it wasn’t for any of the typical radio reasons,” he said. “There weren’t budget cuts, I wasn’t chasing some bigger show, and there wasn’t any drama. My husband had to relocate for his career, so I had to leave a show that, at the time, I genuinely thought the three of us would be doing together forever.”

That friendship outlasted the show. Roy says Maney and LauRen remain two of his closest friends, which made watching the final days of Kiss from a distance feel a little surreal.

“Because I left on such good terms and we’ve remained so close, I’ve always felt connected to everything they’ve done since. That’s part of what makes seeing Kiss change feel so strange. It feels like yesterday I was on the air with them.”

For Roy, those seven years also happened to line up with some pretty big moments in his own life.

“I met my husband in Charlotte. I got engaged while I was there. We got to find out LauRen was pregnant on the air. We were on the air during major moments in the city’s history, and we filmed a reality TV show together on that station. The amount of milestones and memories I have is too much to count!”

Then there were all the things that could only happen when you gave three morning radio personalities an idea, a promotional budget and apparently not quite enough adult supervision.

“We did Alive After Five at the EpiCentre. We took the Maney, Roy and LauRen Show on a county fair tour that took us all the way out to Shelby. LauRen and I hosted pool parties all summer. I married people dressed as zombies at Scarowinds. We bowled for turkeys at Thanksgiving. We did a lot of ridiculous things, and we were having fun and being silly at every step of the way.”

One Halloween, the show rented a bus, filled it with about 20 listeners and headed out for a tour of haunted houses around the Charlotte area. They had even arranged for their listeners to skip the lines when the group arrived.

It was a pretty good plan.

Until the bus broke down on the interstate.

Suddenly, the morning show and a busload of Kiss listeners were walking down an exit ramp and through the woods looking for a gas station.

“At one point, Maney and I ended up in a homeless camp where the people living there could not have been nicer to us,” Roy recalled. “They welcomed us in, gave us a tour of their woods and waited with us until a second bus showed up!”

Another idea started with the 2017 movie It.

Roy remembers getting up around 3 in the morning with Maney and LauRen and driving around Charlotte putting red balloons on storm drains, a nod to Pennywise from the movie. When people started heading to work that morning, they began noticing the balloons and wondering what in the world was going on.

“By around 7 a.m., it had made its way onto the news,” Roy said.

“That was Kiss. Me, Maney and LauRen would have these fun crazy ideas and we’d try to pull it off, seeing how the city would react.”

That might be one of the simplest explanations of what made local morning radio work during that period. They weren’t just sitting in a studio talking about Charlotte. They were out doing things in Charlotte, sometimes with listeners standing right beside them.

And sometimes those ideas got them into trouble.

“There are countless more things, like how we got suspended over putting up our own billboards, and other hilarious nonsense that sometimes not everyone else thought was as funny, but the three of us did.”

Roy says there really wasn’t some complicated programming philosophy behind it.

“We kind of operated in a ‘if we’re having fun, hopefully the listener is having fun’ strategy. And it paid off big.”

There was something else happening at the same time. While Roy, Maney and LauRen were building their show, Kiss was becoming part of Roy’s life away from the microphone too.

That’s why, even after several years away from Charlotte radio, losing the station still hits differently.

“But like most people, I’m sad to see Kiss go,” he said. “I get it. It is the nature of the business. CHR is a challenging format.”

The good news for Roy is that while Kiss is gone, the friendships and part of the show he helped build are not.

Maney and LauRen, along with producer Big Al, moved to K104.7 as Beasley prepared to sell WNKS. Their final Kiss morning show aired September 18, and they began their new chapter on K104.7 September 21.

Roy couldn’t be happier for his old friends.

“I’m incredibly happy that Maney and LauRen are continuing on K104.7. They’re the most talented people I know, and they’ll keep making an amazing show together on K104.”

He likes knowing that at least some of the spirit of those mornings will continue, even without Kiss 95.1 written on the studio wall.

“With Kiss flipping formats and going to a new company, I’m at least happy to know the silly fun that we used to do every morning will still happen on K104.7,” Roy said. “Maney and LauRen still do a show that you can’t miss. It’s just on a different format.”

Roy also had something to say about the show whose longtime Charlotte home is making way for Maney and LauRen.

“I think Bob & Sheri have been incredibly gracious about the transition,” he said. “In this business, people don’t always give their blessing, and it’s clear that this was a plan that they wanted as well. Super kind of them. Much respect for that show.”

For Roy, though, saying goodbye to Kiss ultimately comes back to gratitude.

“There were a lot of radio legends from Kiss, and I’m grateful I got to be part of a chapter, and I’m grateful the friendships from it have lasted long after I left the station.”

“I look forward to watching my friends create new memories on a different station, with the same great company.”

That seems like a fitting way to remember Kiss 95.1.

For 30 years, there were different owners, different morning shows, different personalities and generations of listeners. Everybody who passed through the station has their own version of what Kiss was.

Roy Brown’s version includes friendships that lasted, major moments in his life, pool parties, county fairs, zombie weddings, a broken-down bus, a walk through the woods and red balloons hanging from storm drains before sunrise.

In other words, a whole lot of radio.

And we’re not finished remembering it yet.