The first broadcast of the sister FM station of KSTL was April 2, 1960.
It signed on as a Class “B” station at 98.1mHz with 76 kw of power. General manager Dick Kasten had managed to pick up used equipment from a station in Joplin, MO, that had gone dark. The transmitter was in Illinois at the same site as the KSTL transmitter in East St. Louis.
The station was sold 7 years later to Foreground Music, Inc., which changed the call letters to KRCH.