Deborah Richards, part of a popular Atlanta country morning show in the 1990s, has died at age 62.
Her son Jarrett Smith said she died last week after a series of medical issues likely related to lupus.
Richards, whose legal name outside of radio was Julie Longcore, joined Kicks 101.5 (which is now New Country 101.5) in 1984 covering news and worked with a series of morning hosts until James “Moby” Carner arrived in 1991.
Moby’s larger-than-life personality, along with his interplay with Richards and traffic guy Jim Vann, captured the Kicks audience during the Garth Brooks/Shania Twain era of country music.
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
“Listeners would tell me that it sounded like we were just hanging out at a Waffle House having breakfast,” Richards told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2023 after Moby died.
“She’s the calming feminine perspective,” Moby said in 2001 to the AJC. “I can always tell when I go over the line because she gives me this look.”
Vann called her “one of the most delightful people I’ve ever known. She loved meeting people at remotes.”
Over the years, Richards also championed many local country artists like Alan Jackson and Travis Tritt before they became huge stars.
For a time, Moby in the Morning was syndicated in multiple markets and one year received a morning show of the year award from the Academy of Country Music.
In 2001, Richards left radio of her own accord and opened a voice-over business. She taped radio commercials and narrations for industrial and corporate videos. She also taught voice-over work to others at the Connecticut School of Broadcasting.
“She really set me up for where I am now,” said Bill Celler, a former afternoon host at Kicks who does voice-over work as well. “She was a tremendous mentor and teacher to whole lot of actors in town who got into voice-over.”
Richards started doing radio at age 17 at a small Tennessee AM station in the 1970s “sandwiched between a cemetery and a pig farm,” her son said. She later worked at a station in Buford before moving to Kicks.
Smith remembered her telling him that the radio audience was there to be entertained no matter how good or bad she felt any given day. “She was always professional,” he said.
Though she was a perfectionist, he added, “she was a great mom. She was always there. When she retired from radio, she would be up making breakfast in the morning and snacks in the afternoon. She finally got that freedom to just be a normal schedule parent and made me feel like the luckiest kid growing up.”
Richards is survived by her son, her sister Karen Tucker and brother Greg Richards.
