Joe Soucheray

Early life

Soucheray was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota in 1949. He attended St. Luke's as a grade schooler, Hill High School (now Hill-Murray School), and went to college at University of St. Thomas in the Twin Cities.

Newspaper career

Soucheray entered the media as a sports journalist, beginning work as a sports reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune in 1973. He joined the Saint Paul Pioneer Press in the mid-1980s and served for many years as a sports reporter and columnist, before becoming a general columnist in the mid-1990s.

Joe Soucheray, while working in the news business, has written several books.

Early radio career

In 1980, Soucheray entered the radio business, joining with then-St. Paul Pioneer Press sports columnist Patrick Reusse as co-host Monday Night Sports Talk on KSTP radio. The show was known for its cast of callers doing impressions of various celebrities, in and out of the sports world, of widely varying quality - and, very occasionally, discussion about sports. The lack of actual sports content on "MNST" was a running gag between Soucheray, Reusse and the audience.

The show aired until the early nineties, until Soucheray began his daily "Garage Logic" program (see below). The "Sports Talk" brand lived on in the duo's weekend show, "Saturday Morning Sports Talk" and has continued with the weekday version of "Sports Talk" which began airing on Monday, February 15, 2010, allowing them to lay claim to the "longest-running sports talk show in history."

Garage Logic

Soucheray began hosting his daily Garage Logic drive-time radio show on KSTP on April 29, 1993. In it, Soucheray acts as the mayor of a mythical town bearing the same name as the radio show: Garage Logic, county seat of Gumption County. The motivating idea is to promote traditional values and is a sort of criticism of modern American pop culture and Minnesota's dominant liberal culture, although Soucheray would never wax so philosophical, preferring to stick with the slogan, "Anything that needs to be figured out can be figured out in the garage."

Soucheray has been joined on the air by producer Matt "The Rookie" Michalski since the late 1990s. Rookie is the voice behind many skits and imitations on "Garage Logic" (Janice Borman the chain-smoking marathon runner who takes days to finish, former US President Bill Clinton, former MN governor Jesse Ventura, and former Saint Paul mayor Norm Coleman) and "Saturday Morning Sports Talk" (Clem Haskins). Rookie was often held to mythical 6:00 pm meetings with Soucheray (after conclusion of the show) if he so raised the Mayor's dander by not paying attention. At this point Soucheray would simply say, "6 o'clock." More often, with regard to Rookie's inattentiveness or tomfoolery, Soucheray could often be heard asking Rookie if he actually listens to the show that he is producing.

The program has occupied several time slots during its run as the station's other programming has shifted, but for over a decade it, along with Rush Limbaugh's program, was part of a combination that made KSTP the dominant talk station in the market. With Limbaugh's departure from the station in 2006, Soucheray became KSTP's sole marquee talent.

Guests

Vince Flynn kept a vow to Joe to be the first interview for his latest book, before any other media outlet in the world. In Vince's first interview after releasing "Kill Shot" in early 2012, Joe attempts to persuade him to inform his next interviewer, Don Imus, that he is a distant second to Soucheray. Flynn worked Soucheray into one of his novels as the neighbor to Irene Kennedy. He is described as a "Frenchman" who tinkers in his garage with his dog "rookie" on anything with an internal combustion engine.

Author

Soucheray has authored a number of books, including Sooch!: Sports Writing of Joe Soucheray of the Minneapolis Tribune (ISBN 0-932272-07-X), a book on Twin Cities area sports topics, Waterline: Of Fathers, Sons and Boats (ISBN 1-56792-214-7), a book combining his love of boating with his thoughts on family, and Once There was a Ballpark (ISBN 0-934070-06-7), a book on the history of the Metropolitan Stadium.