Montgomery County’s own Mary McCoy, is a legend in the radio world. When she first signed on at KMCO in Conroe, Queen Elizabeth II, was still a Crown-Princess 74 years ago. Mary, now the radio personality with the longest career in The World, still keeps her schedule at K-Star Radio/KVST 99.7 FM. McCoy’s history with Elvis Presley, most thought happened at Conroe High School, but their first meeting was actually in Shreveport, Louisiana, at the headquarters of the Louisiana Hayride, on the steps outside the venue where he sang. Elvis actually approached her and introduced himself, even though she knew who he was already. The interesting thing is that Elvis always had girls in-tow, and she never wanted to interfere with girls around him.
It was McCoy’s daughter Kim, who started assembling the accolades and mementos of Elvis in a special room at her Conroe residence, and MCN was honored to be the first media outlet invited to view the treasure. The prized photo of Mary as a 16 year old cheek-to-cheek with the eventual King of Rock and Roll, who was but a few years older, has a prime spot amongst the cardboard cuts of the superstar who back in the mid-50s was still an up and coming star. The room is filled with McCoy’s well deserved awards and formal recognitions that she has received over the decades. Mary is a Down to Earth Lady with a voice made for radio, and a string of luck that has saved her career multiple times. She started her career soon after radio in Conroe was birthed, and she hasn’t looked back.
The Elvis Room is a place for McCoy to go, relax, reminisce, while enjoying music or entertaining friends and family. It represents a life’s achievement that is unmatched in The World in regards to radio longevity, and more than likely will stand for a long time. Mary’s ability to sing, and her participation in talent shows in Conroe in the late early 1950s got her recognized, and a desperate radio station owner sought her out for her singing talent with a simple 15 minute show. McCoy is her own worst critic, and when she heard her own voice on the radio the first time, she thought her career was over. To her surprise a sponsor, the Brown Sinclair Service Station in Conroe backed her, and her radio career started, at the age of 12, on a wing and a prayer. By the time Elvis began making waves, Mary was a seasoned radio personality, and he actually knew of McCoy when they met in Shreveport on the steps of the Louisiana Hayride.
They only met those few times in her youth, but the lasting impact of the encounters have stretched for a lifetime. McCoy remembers living in a tent her first four years in Conroe on the site of the future Pepsi Bottling plant on Frazier. She remembers facing the social stigma of tent living, and was relieved when they were finally in an actual house. Mary has shared the stage with some of Country Music’s greatest talents, and has guest hosted at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville several times.
In the 1970s and 80s, the station would send her to Nashville for interviews. It was on one trip when at the airport she busted her recorder, and in being tasked to bring back recorded interviews or not come back at all, Mary was dejected. That is, until she was approached on Lower Broadway by the famous country stand-up comedian and long-time Grand Ole Opry member Jerry Clower, who was a radioman in the US Navy during the Pacific Campaign in World War II. Mary was amazed to see Clower with nothing but a paperclip and pocket-knife, sit down next to her, and commence with surgery on her recorder, bringing it back to life.
“Jerry Clower saved my career that day,” said McCoy. “I had just kept thinking that my days behind the microphone were done until Clower walked up.”
Pictured on the wall are Mary’s parents Tom McCoy (1895-1956) and her mother Artimese Eleontine McCoy (1910-2001). When her father fell ill and eventually passed away, the station increased her pay to $30 dollars per week, an incredible sum at the time for a teenager. Her mother of Italian heritage was born in Mansfield, and even before Mary worked at the radio station she was tasked with opening the building and warming up the equipment in the mornings.
McCoy has been inducted into multiple Halls, such as the Texas Radio Hall of Fame in 2010; the Radio Hall of Fame in 2024; and the Country Radio Hall of Fame this year. Of course she received her Guinness World Record in April 2022, when she was noted as the female on-air personality with the longest career at almost 72 years. Add a few more years down the road, and she is the Queen of all on-airs DJs around The World.
Mary’s Elvis Room is filled with Proclamations, Resolutions, Certificates of Inductions, and Recognitions. Her first single ‘Deep Elem Blues,’ is posted to the wall, done with The Cyclones, and can be heard on You Tube. The song is a tribute to the Deep Ellum neighborhood in Dallas, dating back to 1923, which was the neighborhood of Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lead Belly, and Bill Neely.
Even when McCoy broke her neck in 2000, the episode couldn’t keep her off the airwaves, working for months on end with a halo brace with screws stuck in her skull, but she endured. Mary is dedicated to her work, and thankfully hasn’t really thought of the r-word, but it will be a realization one day, but for now she continues to be the Queen of Montgomery County’s radio personalities, and now The World.