Preston and Steve from WMMR’s Morning Show Tell All

Steve Morrison and Preston Elliot, who are featured in a brand new Philly Mag interview / Photograph by Kyle Kielinski

The owners of this magazine generally dissuade us from touching on topics like, say, dildos. But they’re making an exception this month so that we can interview Preston Elliot and Steve Morrison, the co-stars of WMMR’s indefatigable show bearing their names. The pair have been on the Philly airwaves together in one form or another since 1998, and next year marks their 20th at the station. In this interview with Preston and Steve, they explain the secrets of their success and why their silly and sophomoric humor works so well after all these years.

Hi, guys. I know you just came off the air from your morning broadcast. What were the scintillating topics of conversation?

Preston: The big thing was that we had Nikki Glaser on. We all love her.

Steve: The last time we had Nikki on, we were having dildo races! And she just happened to have a vibrator on her, so she became a last-minute entry into our race.

My mother will be so happy to read this.

Steve: We also discussed the etiquette of multi-person brawls.

Preston: And me trying to replace “I have to do that” with “I get to do that” in my life. If you find yourself with something you’re not looking forward to doing, rather than telling yourself you have to do this, you reframe it in a way that you get to do something.

That sounds like absolute bullshit.

Preston: I strive to make it work but, generally, find that it’s a bridge too far. I’m working more on being in the moment, and that’s going well. But the “get to do this” thing, I’m having trouble.

Steve: We were also talking about Stonehenge and science.

So a celebrity interview, science, self-help mantras, and fight manners. Just another day in the life at the Preston & Steve show. You’re typically on the air for more than five hours each morning. How much of the content do you know the day before?

Steve: At any given moment, we have a list of 50 to 60 things in our queue that we might address, see what works, and usually the discussion goes so off the rails that Alex Haley couldn’t find the roots of where we started. Those are the best days.

Preston: Other than the interviews, things just kind of unfold as they do.

’MMR is, first and foremost, a rock station, as it has been since 1968. I know a little bit about the types of music you both like — I would encourage our readers to look up videos of you impressively drumming along to Rush songs, Preston. And it would be easy to sit here and blah blah blah about our favorite bands. But what I really want to know about is your guilty-pleasure music.

Preston: Oh man. Oof. [long pause] All right. All right. You really want me to let it all hang out there, Victor?

You know it!

Preston: I will admit to going through a Spice Girls phase. They were cute and fun and catchy, and I actually loved some of that music.

Steve, have you lost all respect for Preston now?

Steve: I went to see the Spice World movie when it came out!

I never know when you’re joking.

Steve: I will only say this: I was definitely an early Debbie Gibson adopter.

Preston: Wow.

See, we’re only minutes in and you’re already learning about each other. I was going to ask you to do this next year, because that marks the 20th anniversary of the show moving from Y100 to WMMR and really taking off, but then, well, Rob McElhenney couldn’t do this at the last minute.

Preston: Yeah, thanks for the sloppy seconds, Victor. [laughs]

But I think you’re a perfect fit for this, the 50th anniversary issue of Best of Philly. Because you’ve been on Philly radio for more than half that time, and you truly embody what being the Best of Philly is. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be so successful for this long.

Preston: Well, thank you! We’ve had a tremendous­ amount of success, and with the most recent round of ratings­ numbers that have come in, our support is as high as it’s ever been. It blows us away.

My sense from attending your events and hearing your fans call in is that part of your success comes from this unusual two-generation fan base.

Steve: It’s the most anomalous thing. It’s almost a laughable concept that you’d be wanting to listen to what your parents listened to — and still listen to — but that’s exactly what has happened. We just did our annual blood drive, and this woman comes up to me with a picture of her and her baby daughter with me from 18 years ago. Now her daughter is donating blood with her. We like to joke and say that we’re so uniformly stupid that we’re easily accessed by anyone.

When did you realize you had gone from a fledgling show on Philly radio to a local institution?

Preston: Before social media was big, back when people would send lots of chain emails, this list winds up in my inbox of the 40 things you do that prove you’re a real Philadelphian. You know, you say “wooder.” You’ve watched Rocky too many times. That kind of thing. And down near the bottom of the list: Listen to the Preston & Steve show every day. And I was like, wow, we’ve dug into the marrow here. We found our way into the hearts of Philadelphians.

How would you define your roles and those of the other cast members?
Steve: Preston is the driver, and he’s imbued with this gift where you immediately feel like he’s your buddy. He relates to the audience. And my job is to interrupt Preston and make him laugh.

Preston: Casey organizes and helps run the show, but he’s a wild card, because he has no filter. Nick has so much information in his head, and both he and Casey have such good knowledge of sports, so they keep Steve and me up to speed. And Nick has a great laugh, which is important. Kathy is wonderful. She only engages when she is legitimately interested in what we’re talking about. She doesn’t just jump in whenever. She’s also a priss and a prude but dirty as hell at the same time. Feminine. But then, locker­ room talk.

And Marisa keeps all of you grounded in what’s happening in Philly, because she goes to all the restaurants, all the parties. When I came on your show earlier this year to talk about our 50 Best Restaurants, she said she’d been to 38. No one does that!

Preston: She knows the vibe of the city far more than the rest of us. She goes to all the “scenes.”

Steve: Basically, what you need to know about Marisa is she’s the only one who will agree to attend Dîner en Blanc.

Love a little Dîner en Blanc jab every now and then. Okay, my son walked in with a piece of paper with a question on it for you: “Are the shart-outs electronically produced or are you doing them live on the air?”

[Both laugh]

For the sake of the reader who might not be a regular listener, you must explain.

Preston: Years ago, shout-outs became a thing on the radio, where a host would give a shout-out to a listener. It was being beaten to death. So repetitive and boring. But then the movie Along Came Polly with Ben Stiller and Philip Seymour Hoffman came out, and that’s the first time I had heard the word shart, which, for your readers, is the sound you make when you think you have to fart but a little poop comes out.

Steve: It’s a very wet fart. And we make some of those sounds on the air live and some are also recordings of Casey’s friend’s actual farts or sharts.

I feel so enlightened having this knowledge.

Preston: So people will email us, saying there is somebody they want to congratulate, a birthday, whatever, or it might be the last day of chemotherapy for someone. And, so, we give them a shart-out.

It’s so stupid. But it works. It’s a way you connect with the community.

Steve: People love farts. We’ve been laughing at farts since infancy. And let me tell you something I’ve learned over the years. A lot of people will say that what we do is guy humor. Women aren’t going to like this! Completely. Wrong. Women love us.

We are the respite, a safe haven. And do you know how many times we’ve been thanked for that? There are no soapboxes here. And we’re not trying to offend anybody.” — Steve Morrison

Was there some FM morning show that inspired you 30 years ago to create this?

Preston: Honestly, I hated morning shows. And I certainly didn’t want to do a morning show, because you have to wake up too early in the fucking morning.

Steve: I feel like, in a lot of ways, our show is a parody of the morning-drive radio show, the way that David Letterman was a parody of daytime talk shows when he first aired in the mornings. And there’s just this unique mix in each show. We had Ken Burns in to talk about one of his great documentaries, and then we also had a porn star in the room that day. And everyone got along so wonderfully. And the next time Ken came on the show, he asked, “Where’s the stripper?!” Life is sort of this Whitman’s sampler of things, and I think we try to represent that in the show.

One other key to your show seems to be that you guys don’t do “heavy.” No murders. You don’t debate election outcomes. You don’t get into insurrections.

Preston: We have a news break at the beginning of the day that will talk about anything big going on, but no, we definitely do not break it down or get into big discussions.

You absolutely avoid divisive issues except maybe for people liking or not liking Taylor Swift.

Steve: You know, Victor, it would be safer to talk about politics than not liking Taylor Swift. If you wanna bring the hurt, you get nasty about Taylor Swift! But seriously, we are the respite, a safe haven. And do you know how many times we’ve been thanked for that? There are no soapboxes here. And we’re not trying to offend anybody.

Except my mom with the dildo races.

Preston: Sorry about that! One thing we really pride ourselves on is this: Never. Be. Mean. There’s just no reason for it.

There have been some major staffing shake-ups and changes at WMMR in the past couple of years that I know you can’t discuss in detail — you are, after all, employees — but your fans have certainly been discussing them and majorly trashing the big corporation that owns the station, Beasley Media Group. Can you answer this question? Has your job become harder working for a company like Beasley?

Preston: Honestly, no. Not for the Preston & Steve show. We’ve had a certain amount of success and are trusted by whoever has owned this company over the years to just do what we do, how we wanna do it.

Steve: But it’s certainly hard to see your co-workers let go, corporate cuts and so forth.

One longtime trademark of your show was Jackass-style stunts. You used to do them all the time. Virtually never nowadays. Did your bosses put a stop to that?

Preston: There were so, so many stunts. Truly a plethora, featuring cannons, detonations, all kinds of things. Things where we were praying that someone didn’t, you know, die.

Steve: But because of the amount of legalese now and the overly litigious nature of things, it’s hard to pull them off today. Lawyers!

I remember Terry Gross telling me about her Fresh Air interviews that didn’t go so well: Bill O’Reilly walking out in the middle of the interview, Gene Simmons being the misogynistic scumbag that he is. Any interviews like these come to mind?

Preston: Wayne Brady was an absolute frigging jerk, totally disinterested in us and annoyed by our questions. I thought maybe it was us, but then a year later, a friend in radio brought him up out of the blue and said, “Wayne Brady is a dick.” So I guess it wasn’t us!

Steve: And Wallace Shawn from The Princess Bride and My Dinner With Andre. He was so lame.

Preston: So lame!

Steve: I was like, how can you be this boring and unfunny?! You’re Wallace Shawn!

If somebody wants to bet me $1,000 that you’ll still be on the air in 2031 after your latest contract extension ends, do I take that bet?

Preston: I’m still having fun and definitely don’t see 2030 as being the last year.

Steve: I’m the oldest of the group, and I’ll be doing this as long as I am even fairly sentient. It’s just a wonderful way to spend your morning. I don’t want to sound like a Hallmark card here, but my wife, Clare, and I are really humbled by the fact that the people of Philadelphia have given us the life and the livelihood that we have. And then to see 1,100 people coming to give blood at our blood drive or seeing people donate two million pounds of food at our big Camp Out for Hunger event for Philabundance each November, it’s truly, truly moving. We’re not going anywhere.

Photograph by Douglas A. Lockard

Five Notorious Stunts From the Preston & Steve Archives

Granny in a wood chipper? Flying sex dolls?

Nacho Cannon

The target? A Preston & Steve intern. The weapon of choice? A cannon filled with nachos. “The problem was, we didn’t realize just how powerful this cannon was,” says Preston. “It was really crazy,” adds Steve. “It’s amazing no one ever died.”

The Wood Chipper

You wanted to win Eagles playoff tickets? You had to show up with collateral, something important to you. Answer a trivia question right? You win the tickets. Wrong? Into the wood chipper your item goes. “One woman brought her grandmother’s ashes,” says Preston. “It was awful,” Steve adds. “There were human remains flying all over the place. I got so many ashes in my mouth.”

Kill Casey

The team spent a month trying to find new ways to kill Casey Boy. “We dragged him behind a horse at full gallop and shot him with thousands of paintballs,” recalls Steve. “He just wouldn’t die.”

The Cardboard Classic

“Just the right amount of reckless abandon and fun” is how Steve sums up this annual event in the Poconos in which listeners design outlandish sleds from cardboard (the sleds often sport beer taps and fireworks) and then launch themselves down a mountain. “That photo of us in front of the raging fire was the first and last time we executed our brilliant idea of finishing the event with a huge ceremonial cardboard-sled bonfire,” recalls Steve. Preston points out that the event also features semi-nudity and “snow rash,” two things that sound particularly unpleasant together.

The Sex Doll

What would happen if you attached a Go-Pro’d, GPS’d sex doll to an extra-large helium balloon and released it? Sometimes, it got caught in trees near office buildings. “Another time, it wandered a little too close to the airport and over active traffic. Our station manager got an angry call,” Steve says.

This Preston and Steve interview was published as “The Radio Stars” in the August 2024 issue of Philadelphia magazine.