Today’s DOTD - Drink Of The Day - is a Showbiz Cocktail inspired by the birthday of legendary radio talk show host, Howard Stern!
Radio personality Howard Stern is known for his controversial broadcasts on his long-running program The Howard Stern Show. The New York native brought his signature “shock jock” radio style to New York listeners in 1982 and, by 1986, his show went into national syndication. Repeated fines and interference from the FCC eventually drove the self-proclaimed “King of All Media” to satellite radio in 2004. He aired his first episode on Sirius XM in January 2006. After an extended contract negotiation throughout much of 2025, Howard signed a three year extension of his contract with Sirius XM in December. Stern has also written multiple best-selling books and served as a judge on the TV competition show America’s Got Talent.
Howard Allan Stern was born on January 12, 1954, in New York City. He is the younger of Ben & Rae Stern’s two children, and spent the early part of his youth in the one mile-square town of Roosevelt, Long Island.
Stern’s early taste for radio and recording seems to have been inherited from his father. Ben, part-owner of a recording studio, frequently recorded his son and daughter on all kinds of topics. Sometimes short-fused, Ben would quiz his children on current events, an open invitation to his young boy to get sarcastic when he didn’t know the answers. “So when I asked him these serious questions, he ends up being a wise guy,” Ben recalled. “And so I got mad and said, ‘Shut up and sit down. Don’t be stupid, you moron.’”
Stern showed an early love of performance, as well as a love for outrageous actions & people. In the basement of the family’s Roosevelt, NY home, he’d frequently put together elaborate puppet shows for his friends. The performances had come at the urging of his mother, Rae, but Howard quickly gave them his own twist. He named his act ‘The Perverted Marionette Show,’ and his puppets more than lived up to the title. “I took something so innocent and beautiful and really just ruined it,” Stern said. “My parents weren’t privy to the dirty performances, though my friends would beg me for puppet shows.”
Stern’s love for attention was coupled by his outsider status. In the largely Black community of Roosevelt, the young white Jewish boy had trouble fitting in. Over the years, Stern has referred to a rough childhood that saw him the target of periodic school fights. He once shared that one of his best friends, who was Black, was beaten up for hanging out with him.
In 1969, the Sterns moved to Rockville Centre, a largely white community that seemed completely alien to the 15-year-old high school student. “It wasn’t any better in Rockville Centre,” Stern wrote in his 1993 best-selling autobiography, Private Parts. “I couldn’t adjust at all. I was totally lost in a white community. I felt like Tarzan when they got him out of Africa and brought him back to England.” Howard navigated his high school years by staying close with a few buddies, playing poker, and enjoying ping-pong.
In the fall of 1972, Stern left New York to attend Boston University, where the first hints of his future “shock jock” career made a showing. Stern volunteered at the college radio station and got his first taste of the business. His hosting days were short-lived. After his debut program - a broadcast that included a racially charged skit called “Godzilla Goes to Harlem” - the university canceled the show.
Fittingly, Stern decided to pursue a communications degree. He tallied a 3.8 GPA and, with his bachelor’s in hand, immediately set out to begin his professional radio career.
Stern’s first gig came at a small radio station in Briarcliff Manor, New York. Eventually, it dawned on Stern that he would forever be relegated to a life of mediocrity if he continued on as a straight music DJ. “So I started to mess around,” he said. “It was unheard-of to mix talking on the phone with playing music. It was outrageous. It was blasphemy.” But it was exactly what Stern wanted to do. So the DJ moved to Hartford, Connecticut, and then Detroit. When the Michigan station changed its format to country and western, Stern fled to legendary rock station DC 101, in Washington, D.C.
In D.C., Stern made significant career inroads. He met Robin Quivers, a newswoman and former U.S. Air Force nurse, who became a part of the Stern radio team.
Stern also began developing a reputation for his wild antics. In January 1982, following the crashing of an Air Florida flight into the 14th Street Bridge in D.C., Stern got on the phone and called the airline. “What’s the price of a one-way ticket from National Airport to the 14th Street Bridge?” he asked. “Is that going to be a regular stop?”
Later that year, Stern moved back to New York City after he accepted a job with the now-defunct WNBC-AM. But trouble awaited before he even got behind the microphone, as his new—and apparently nervous—bosses handed the DJ a long list of orders. The list prohibited Stern from using “jokes or sketches relating to personal tragedies” as well as “slander, defamation or personal attacks on private individuals or organizations unless they have consented or are a part of the act.”
Stern’s popularity was taken to new heights soon after with the release of his autobiography, Private Parts, a detailed, funny look at Stern’s life. With more than 500,000 copies in print in its first month, Private Parts proved to be the fastest-selling book in Simon & Schuster’s 70-year publishing history. After taking the top spot on The New York Times bestseller list in October 1993, it remained there for a full month.
Stern followed in 1995 with another bestseller, Miss America. In 1997, Private Parts was turned into a successful movie starring Stern himself. Howard released his third book, Howard Stern Comes Again, in May 2019. A memoir, the book also contained collections of some his best interviews over the years, including those with Trump.
While Howard began a TV show of his radio show in the 90s that aired on E! through the early 2000s, Sirius XM has really improved Howard’s video production, showcasing deeper, more serious, amore personal interviews with Stern since 2016.
In 2011, Stern replaced Piers Morgan as a judge on the competition show America’s Got Talent for its seventh season, joining returning judges Sharon Osbourne and Howie Mandel. Despite his reputation for harshness on the radio, Stern proved surprisingly supportive of contestants at times while showcasing his quick wit. He stayed on for four seasons before signing off from AGT in 2015, where he was replaced by executive producer Simon Cowell.
Stern is married to model and actor Beth Ostrosky. They first met a party where Ostrosky was on a blind date at the time. After seven years of dating, the couple got married in October 2008 at a New York City restaurant in Manhattan. The guest list included longtime friends Barbara Walters, Billy Joel, John Stamos, Joan Rivers, Donald Trump, and Sarah Silverman. They later remarried on an episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show in October 2019, with Colton Underwood of The Bachelor officiating.
Before he wed Ostrosky, Stern was married to Alison Berns, whom he met at Boston University when he cast her in a student film on transcendental meditation. They exchanged vows in 1978 and went on to have three daughters together: Emily, born in 1983; Deborah, born in 1986; and Ashley, born in 1993. Stern and Berns divorced in 2001.
Howard and Beth have both long been involved in animal rescue, for cats, dogs, and more. They’re both heavily involved with the North Shore Animal League America (NSALA), headquartered in Port Washington, New York, near their home on Long Island. They foster animals, Beth continues to write a monthly blog for the NSALA, and Howard uses his radio platform to raise awareness for animal welfare.
For the radio talker who’s always kept it interesting, let’s a raise glass to Howard Stern on his birthday, with the Drink Of The Day, a Showbiz Cocktail.
Ingredients
Here’s what you’re going to need for this drink:
