Maury O’Dell, the neighborly voice of morning radio on Raleigh’s WPTF, dies
.JPEG "Longtime WPTF morning radio host Maury O’Dell has died.")
For 27 years, Maury O’Dell was the warm, familiar voice on the morning radio — a talk specialist who ad-libbed his way through tens of thousands of hours, offering his dedicated audience thoughts on last night’s game, next week’s election and advice on fixing a leaky dishwasher.
He joined WPTF as a young man in the mid-1970s, tackling the early-morning duties along with his signature 10 a.m. show: “Ask Your Neighbor,” which drew an estimated 25,000 listeners from Greenville to Greensboro.
He juggled dozens of callers through that program, many of them regulars, seeking tips on removing carpet stains, recipes for banana pudding, the most reliable brand of toaster and the best corndog at the State Fair. To close each day, he held an on-air auction, selling everything from used bicycles to secondhand sump pumps.
‘He was Uncle Maury’
Those weekday broadcasts were so popular that listeners at home turned on the radio in every room of the house so they wouldn’t miss a word.
“He was Uncle Maury,” said Mike Raley, longtime host of the “Weekend Gardener” program, another WPTF staple. “A lot of it was chitchat about the darnedest things. Maury was very funny. He was affable. He was a wonderful ad-libber among a lot of great ad-libbers.”
O’Dell died last week at 86. His funeral will be held at 11 a.m. on Nov. 18 at Trinity Baptist Church in Raleigh.
A native of Union, S.C., he came to WPTF after on-air stints in both Spartanburg and Atlanta, having started in radio at age 17. He joined WPTF for the afternoon shift, Raley said, but as an instant success, soon took the coveted morning spot.
By the mid-’70s, WPTF had already had two previous hosts for “Ask Your Neighbor,” notably Charlie Gaddy, best-known for his decades of anchoring the evening TV news broadcast on WRAL. But when the radio station approached O’Dell with the job, he balked.
“I thought it was the corniest thing I ever heard,” he told The N&O in 1985. “I thought they must be joking.”
But he took the job and soon became the “Ask Your Neighbor” mainstay.
Before long, he had local experts calling nearly every show: Coy Franklin in Durham, with his tips on treating dogs with fleas; Moria Jones, who had the on-air nickname “Sunshine” and offered such jaunty commentary listeners thought she was being paid.
‘Ask Your Neighbor’
Along the way, the show sold butter bean shellers and described the best method for pulling chewing gum off polyester. When a recipe aired, people would call back and ask for it to be repeated.
“The image is of two neighbors standing at a fence,” O’Dell told The N&O, “swapping hints and recipes.”
O’Dell manned the morning hours from his mid-’70s start well beyond the late-1980s demise of “Ask Your Neighbor,” swapping observations with legendary sports director Garry Dornburg, interviewing a local candidate or an actor opening a Raleigh play.
O’Dell readily admitted he wasn’t a tough interviewer, but rather a sounding board for local ideas who didn’t push an agenda.
Still, in the later years before his retirement in 2003, he would find the work more taxing conversationally. He would take calls from grieving Raleigh residents in the days and weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, and he once spoke to a listener who was contemplating suicide.
Years later, that listener would call O’Dell back and thank him for caring.
For those that heard it, his voice remains just as familiar and comforting 20 years after it left the air — a broadcast that kept Raleigh close.
This story was originally published October 31, 2023 at 9:40 AM with the headline "Maury O’Dell, the neighborly voice of morning radio on Raleigh’s WPTF, dies."