And Baby Makes Three--Live on the Air : Melissa Sharpe Does ‘Star 98’ Job From Home and Husband Jim Works Out of the Studio

In an uncommonly short maternity leave, KYSR-FM (98.7) disc jockey Melissa Sharpe was back at her microphone less than two weeks after giving birth to baby Marina on May 11. As always, she was exchanging early morning wake-up chatter with her on-air partner and husband, Jim Sharpe.

This time, however, Melissa Sharpe, 34, was broadcasting from home, juggling a nursing infant with a newly installed microphone in a cramped corner of her living room.

With Jim Sharpe, 31, holding court at KYSR’s studios in Burbank, the new morning drive arrangement is an unusual one for the local airwaves. It also gives the Sharpes new grist to share with listeners who tune into “Star 98” 5:30-10 weekday mornings to hear their married-with-children chatter, along with “hits from the ‘80s and ‘90s.”

“We have the same things going on in our lives as our listeners,” Melissa said during a recent interview at the couple’s Topanga home. “The cats, the cars, the kids, the house. Everything.

“It’s so easy for us to do this because there is so much inherent comedy in being a family,” she added. “We have a much more familiar relationship than any other morning show.”

To say the least. Few morning disc jockeys could crack, as Jim Sharpe did recently upon learning that his wife was holding their infant daughter in her arms, “Gee, I wonder what she thinks of the microphone? Mmmm, lunch?”

While the Sharpes are not the only married couple sharing broadcast duties locally--Leslie Pam and Ann Christie are a husband-and-wife therapist team on KMPC-AM (710)--they are certainly the only ones to contend with the problem of nursing a baby while juggling tunes and talk, live and on the air.

“I kind of need my hands for some of the controls. I’ve learned to use my foot for one little control while I’m nursing!” Melissa says with a laugh. Adds Jim: “Sometimes I’ll have the headphones on, I can barely hear it, but I realize . . . she’s nursing .”

Taking such a short maternity leave and broadcasting from home have not been without upsets.

“I wish I had waited longer to go back to work,” Melissa says. “And it is a little hard, having the baby in the same room while I’m broadcasting. But this is a career. You can’t stop being a team. And I can’t leave a little tiny baby with a baby-sitter.”

The station’s management has been generally agreeable to the arrangement, although everyone notes that KYSR has not promoted the couple as a married version of, say, Regis Philbin and Kathie Lee Gifford.

“I’m not as comfortable as Jim is about just throwing our lives on the air,” says Melissa, a dark-haired, slender woman from Stockton. “You’d think after five years I’d be getting used to this.”

Indeed. This is a couple who got married on the air during morning drive time in 1987. They were working in Tucson, he on an FM morning show, she on an evening AM show. But the stations were owned by the same company, so after they fell in love, the wedding ceremony was conducted in a simulcast.

*

For two years, the Sharpes worked separately, even on competing morning shows at one point. Then in 1990, they decided to team up and, during the next few years, worked in Omaha, Dallas and New Orleans. They joined KYSR in April, 1993.

“I’d like to think that the fact that we’re married is not the only reason we got the job,” Jim says. “Obviously, you have to be two strong [on-air] people too.”

Still, the marital chemistry certainly adds to the couple’s water-cooler banter, which typically covers the latest in movies and television, music, trivia games, giveaways and--yes--their relationship and their children: Melanie, 10, from Melissa’s first marriage, and their son, Robert, 7.

“They’re like your zany next-door neighbors, the unique people in the yard across the street,” says KYSR General Manager Bob Griffith, who hired them. “We wanted [as morning disc jockeys] the folks next door, people you don’t mind having a cup of coffee with.”

Griffith admits that hiring the Sharpes was risky.

“They moved here as a married couple, but there was no guarantee they’d stay married,” he says.

In fact, the Sharpes went through a rocky period when they first moved to Los Angeles. Unbeknown to their listeners at the time, the couple began seeing a marriage counselor and then separated for a few weeks.

“We would drive together to work, we would do the show, we would get off the air, we would go to breakfast or lunch, we’d go to the health club together--it was like, argghhhhhh!” Melissa says.

“It was mostly me,” her husband says.

“You were a butt-head,” Melissa interjects, turning an interview into a demonstration of their on-air banter.

“I’m black and white on everything. Melissa is gray on a lot, and it drives me nuts. But it’s good. I could use a hell of a lot more gray in my life,” says Jim, a sandy-haired, bearded, Arizona native whose laid-back looks belie his admittedly intense side. “She actually gives it to me.”

“I thought the separation would be the answer, that it would make me feel better, and it made me feel worse,” Melissa says.

“It’s just because I’m so damned irresistible,” Jim explains.

“We belong together,” Melissa answers. “We’re desperately in love.”

KYSR executives hope listeners will come to feel the same way. The show ranked 19th in the most recent Arbitron ratings, attracting 2.2% of the audience, but Griffith is being patient. “Great morning teams by and large don’t happen overnight,” he says.