Dean O’Neal

Vice President, General Manager and Program Director, Afternoons, 2:00 P.M. – 7:00 P.M.

Biography

Born and raised in President Harry S. Truman's home town of Independence, Missouri (a suburb of Kansas City), Dean has fond childhood memories of falling asleep with a transistor radio under his pillow. Well, at least his parents thought he was sleeping! He would spend hours tuning around the AM radio dial after the sun went down. It was after dark that one could get lost in the sounds of Top 40 Powerhouse AM stations drifting in from hundreds of miles away such as 89-WLS in Chicago, 15-KSTP in St.Paul/Minneapolis or 1090-KAAY in Little Rock. It was amazing personalities like John "Records" Landecker, Chuck Knapp and Beau Rider who ignited Dean's passion for radio. A passion that God had some big plans for down the road.

Dean's first radio experience was limited to pretend broadcasts recorded into a portable GE cassette recorder. But at the tender age of twelve, a Kansas City blizzard was going to change all of that. After shoveling 18 inches of snow off the family driveway, Dean took the eight dollars reward burning a hole in his pocket and headed straight for the nearest Radio Shack store to purchase the most exciting thing he had ever seen in their catalog. The Radio Shack AM Broadcaster kit. Two days of attempted kit assembly later and only after his dad re-wired the entire kit properly, Dean plugged in the 9 volt battery and made his radio debut on Country Sunshine 1230. Dean's very own AM station had a mammoth fifty foot coverage area in all directions from studios and transmitter located in his bedroom! Selling 25 cent commercials to the neighborhood Avon and Shaklee distributors, he was able to maintain the necessary supply of batteries to keep his pee-wee radio station on the air each day after school and from moment he woke up until bedtime each weekend.

By the age of 15, Dean had managed to talk his way into a real radio station at Oldies 1140-KLDY. Since leaving the Midwestern land of his roots (and bitter cold winters), Dean has spent the past 20+ years on the radio in Nashville, Daytona Beach, and Orlando. He was present at the birth of Z88.3 back in August of 1995 and over a decade later, stands in awe of what God has done at 88.3 on the FM dial. Dean, his son Zachary, two cats, a guinea pig and tank of goldfish live in Longwood. In addition to afternoon on-air duties, he is also Z88.3’s General Manager/Program Director. The O’Neal's worship God at the Longwood campus of Northland, A Church Distributed.