Jim Verdi had no clue what he was doing, but one thing was certain—he was precisely where he needed to be.
It was 1989 and Verdi, a wide-eyed 24-year-old kid from Brooklyn, had just scored his first full-time gig as a morning show producer at Star 105 in Dallas.
It was a run-of-the-mill adult contemporary hits radio station, yet they made their mark by inviting stars like Dana Carvey, Joe Piscopo, Jim Belushi and Leslie Nielsen onto the show for small bits. You never knew who’d be on next, and Verdi was at the center of it all. That is, until he wasn’t.
Verdi was constantly looking over his shoulder at a general manager who didn’t like him. To make matters worse, they sold the station and changed the format. In an instant, Verdi was unemployed.
“I was rehired months later by the country station that the 105.3 FM frequency had flipped to. Young Country was born,” the long-time Flower Mound native said in his book, “The Dan Bongino Show Survival Guide.” “I didn’t really want the job, but I was in a position where I had to take it. A kid from Brooklyn and country music? Are you kidding?”
“I was hired to produce the morning show,” said Verdi. “It was the best job I ever had.”
Anyone who knows Verdi may argue that last statement is overblown. After all, this is a guy who went from wanting to be an archaeologist as a kid (Indiana Jones, anyone?) to cobbling together a radio career that’s spanned 36 years, countless format shifts, roles such as executive producer, on-air personality, music director, anchor and network writer, and lengthy stints working for the likes of Radio Disney and ESPN. The contact list in his cell phone is peppered with celebrities, politicians, athletes and any other public figure you wish you could pick up the phone and text on a whim.
That includes conservative political commentator, radio host and former police officer Dan Bongino, the former host of “The Dan Bongino Show” and newly-minted deputy director of the FBI. Verdi, now 59, was the executive producer on Bongino’s show for four years. Their syndicated radio show and daily podcast replaced the late Rush Limbaugh in 2021.
“The Dan Bongino Show” was the sixth-most popular podcast in the United States before it ended on March 14.
“I’m going to miss talking to Dan every day, but I’m also super thrilled for him,” Verdi said. “In his soul, he’s a law enforcement officer and now he has a chance to fix the agency. I know him and [director of the FBI] Kash Patel. They are fantastic people.”
With Bongino firmly entrenched in the FBI, no one needs to worry about Verdi’s future. When the show ended on March 14, he quickly transitioned into the same role at Westwood One with “The Vince Show” hosted by Vince Coglianese.
“I won’t miss a beat, and I’ll keep coming back for as long as they’ll let me,” Verdi quipped.
Most people would never imagine a radio guy who’s seen and done it all, like Jim Verdi, has been in Flower Mound this entire time. His family moved to Irving when he was 16. He was a self-professed Dallas Cowboys fan from Brooklyn; his dad loved Roger Staubach and didn’t waste any time driving past the old Texas Stadium upon their arrival. It may have taken a little bit for young Jim to fit in at a new public school with four times the student body of his former Catholic school in Brooklyn, but once he did, he was off and running.
He and his wife, Toni, were married in 1992 and, after living in Mesquite for half a heartbeat, moved to Flower Mound in 1995. They had two kids, Nicolas and Mia. Both went through Lewisville ISD and graduated from Flower Mound High School.
During that time, Verdi’s career on the airwaves had more twists and turns than an old Chubby Checker song. Nicolas was three years old and Toni was pregnant with Mia when Verdi found himself out of a job at Young Country. On top of that, Toni subsequently lost her job.
As luck would have it, ESPN was moving into DFW. Verdi was convinced that his experience could land him a gig as a sportscaster, but all they had left was a job as a morning board operator for SportsCenter reports. The pay was less than what he was making at Young Country and, in many ways, he was starting from the bottom of the barrel. But beggars can’t be choosers.
He took the job and kept pushing for new opportunities. In the years that followed, Verdi was offered a job at Radio Disney in 2004. He was there for 10 years before the organization moved to Burbank. As Verdi planned his next move, an executive with Westwood One approached him to do some “vacation fill-in work producing a famous national talk show host.”
The rest, as they say, is history. Verdi has been with Westwood One for 11 years.
He published his book in 2024. And, of course, it quickly became a best-seller.
“We had a lot of inside jokes at Dan’s show, and he suggested that I write a book about it,” Verdi said. “The funny thing is that he was thinking more like a pamphlet. It turned into something much bigger, and he loved it. Basically, it goes into detail about how we put the show together for all those years and all the things that could go wrong. We call them goofy glue incidents… major technical breakdowns like Dan vanishing in the middle of the broadcast and me trying to scramble to get him back on the air.”
He added, “There was also the Pantera incident. Pantera is a heavy metal band, and I had played some of their music going into a break. Dan didn’t think too much of it and said on-air that we didn’t need to play that anymore. I told him, ‘You’ll hear about that later—Pantera has quite a loyal fan base.’ Sure enough, his phone started blowing up while he was at the dentist. All these people were so upset that he’d disrespect Pantera. Needless to say, we played Pantera from that moment on.”
Through it all, Jim Verdi has remained the same affable and approachable kid from Brooklyn who dreamed the biggest dreams possible and always found himself in the right place at the right time throughout a remarkable career. When he’s not working, he enjoys spending time with family, sharpening his skills as an award-winning pitmaster and volunteering as a docent at the Gibson-Grant Log House in Flower Mound.
Where his story goes from here is uncertain, but one thing is certain: wherever he ends up next, it’ll be precisely where he needs to be.
