Halls of Fame

Harry Fender – 2012

Harry Fender liked to tell anyone who would listen that he walked away from a great job offer by entertainment entrepreneur Flo Ziegfeld. Returning to St. Louis from New York, Fender became a member of the city police gambling squad. But as WW II ended, he found a niche in local show business on radio stations KXOK and KMOX. Those eventually led to the electronic media stage of local television where he finished his career at Captain 11 on KPLR-TV. It was in this 1960s daily kids’ show that Clarence “Harry” Fender endeared himself to thousands of youngsters, hosting live audiences of kids in the studio and introducing many to the antics of the Three Stooges each day.

Don Marsh – 2012

Don Marsh won 12 Regional Emmy Awards for his television work in St. Louis, most of which was at KTVI, where served as a news anchor and specialized in political reporting. While at KTVI and KDNL, Marsh produced and hosted over 1,600 public affairs programs. He also found time to teach broadcast journalism at the college level, write three books and work as a host of talk programming on two local stations. Marsh was cited by the St. Louis Association of Black Journalists in 1998 for his work and received the top three major local awards for his journalistic contributions over the years.

Robert Guillaume – 2006

Robert Guillaume was born Robert Williams in St. Louis. Before pursuing an acting career, he studied at St. Louis University and Washington University and served in the United States Army. Guillaume made his television debut in the series “Soap”, playing the butler, Benson DuBois, from 1977 to 1979. That series’ success led him to a spinoff series, “Benson”, which ran until 1986. He won Emmy Awards for both series. A later TV role as television executive Isaac Jaffe on “Sports Night” (1998-2000), allowed Guillaume to break new ground when the stroke that he suffered in real life, along with his subsequent recovery, was written into the scripts of the show for his character.

Wilma Sim – 2013

In television’s infancy, “live and local” was the daily reality and one of those pioneers in St. Louis was Wilma Sim. Taking over the “Homemaking with KSD-TV” from Esther Lee Bride, who had been on loan from Union Electric, Sim made the show her own through most of the 1950s and is rightly seen as one of St. Louis pioneering TV stars. She appeared on the first local color television broadcast and was active in American Women in Radio and Television. In later life she was a columnist for Farm Journal Magazine. Named as a distinguished graduate of the University of Minnesota for her professional accomplishments, Wilma Sim was also recognized as one of the Top 10 Women in Advertising in America in 1972.

Harry Caray – 2006

​Harry Caray (Carabina) hit town in 1944 as an announcer at the St. Louis Star radio station, KXOK. While his strength was in sports broadcasting, which he put to good use that year doing play-by-play for the Cardinals/Browns World Series, he was a jack-of-all-trades back at the station. Caray would write his own copy, conduct news interviews, and write and present editorials on the station, and he had a regular sports talk program as well.
It was said he sought a job at KMOX in 1943 by sending a personal letter to the home of the station’s general manager, Merle Jones, who granted him an interview and then told him to get some experience and come back.
He did his first game as a Cardinals’ announcer April 17, 1945. Years later, in 1955, Caray would be teamed in the Cardinals’ broadcast booth with Jack Buck and Joe Garagiola, and the three were heard throughout the Midwest over the vast Cardinals’ radio network.
Harry Caray’s colorful announcing and antics endeared him to radio fans, whom Caray felt were the people to whom he was responsible. When players became perturbed at his description of their work, Caray swore he was telling it the way he saw it.
After 25 years in the St. Louis broadcast booth, Harry Caray was given his walking papers by his employer, Anheuser-Busch.

Allan Cohen – 2008

KMOV president and general manager Allan Cohen distinguished himself as a strong leader in the field of television broadcasting and as an extraordinary individual committed to helping the community in which he lived and worked. Under his direction, KMOV achieved a well-deserved, national reputation as one of the top-rated and most watched television stations in the country. During Cohen’s tenure at the helm, KMOV received numerous awards and honors for outstanding programming, excellent reporting and its commitment to community involvement, including the National Association of Broadcasting Education Foundation’s Service to America – Service to Children award in 2001 and 2004, and a 2003 Gerald R. Loeb Award.