Bruce Vidal, 54; Longtime L.A. Disc Jockey Reveled in Having Achieved His ‘Dream Job’

Bruce Vidal, a disc jockey for KIIS-FM (102.7) for 15 years, whose booming voice was as big as his 300-pound girth, has died. He was 54.

Vidal, who spent 1982 through 1996 on local air waves, died Friday of an apparent heart attack at his home near Palm Desert, said Don Barrett, author of the book “Los Angeles Radio People.” Vidal had suffered from complications of diabetes.

During part of his tenure here, in the mid-1980s, Vidal was married to his chief competitor, Laurie Allen, whose job he took at KIIS. Their on-air rivalry earned them an appearance on ABC’s “Good Morning America” and articles in People magazine and The Times, among other publications.

The two, who married in Las Vegas in 1976, both spun patter and music from 6 to 10 p.m. five nights a week, Vidal on KIIS and Allen on KMGG-FM (105.9).

They joked about the two cars parked in their Canoga Park driveway: a sleek, new red Corvette and a not-so-sleek dented Dodge Aries.

“Whoever gets the highest ratings,” Allen told The Times in 1985, “gets to drive the Corvette.”

Vidal, who attracted four times as many listeners as his wife, got the sports car.

“It’s my dream job,” Vidal told The Times of his KIIS stint in that dual interview. “Fifteen years ago, when I got into radio, I wanted to come to Los Angeles, work at the No. 1 Top-40 station in town, make a lot of money, live in the Valley, have a house with a pool and drive a Corvette. And it’s happened.”

In 1997, Vidal moved on to smaller radio stations, first in Thousand Oaks and in 1999 to what had become KELT-FM (92.7) in Riverside.

Born in Los Angeles, the son of a postman, Vidal took five years to get through high school and then graduated to a job parking cars. But after seeing a television commercial for the Career Academy School of Broadcasting, he took the six-month course in 1970 and landed a job at a small station in Washington, Iowa. Three years later, he moved to station KDLM in Detroit Lakes, Minn., where he met Allen. In 1976, after marrying Allen, Vidal went to work at KOIL in Omaha, Neb.

By 1981, he had moved to K101 in San Francisco. It was the scene of his worst professional blunder. As a promotion gimmick, the station had offered to pay $25,000 to any listener who caught a deejay failing to play three songs consecutively between commercials and announcements.

“It was very intense because we did commercials at 10, 20, 30 and 50 minutes. We all felt like a gun was to our heads,” he told People in 1985.

Vidal read an ad without playing the touted three-in-a-row songs, and the station had to pay up. Soon after, he moved south, starting with a part-time job at KIIS and then replacing Allen as evening deejay.

Information about survivors was not immediately available.