Gary DellAbate - They Call Me Baba Booey

To my brother Steven, who I miss every day.

To my brother Anthony, who laid the foundation for my insane music knowledge and was invaluable to helping me fill in the blanks. Thanks for listening and helping.

To super-agent Don Buchwald, who believed in me and changed my life. And to Tony Burton, who takes my call ten times a day and pushed to help me get this done.

To Richard Abate, who told me what this book should really be and then talked me into it! And to Julie Grau, for walking me through this process with a smile and keeping us all on track.

To Chad Millman. We clicked right away. This could never have been done in such a short time without your amazing work ethic.

To Fred Norris, who has treated me with respect since the day I met him.

To Robin Quivers, who is like a sister to me. The Howard Stern Show is a family, and it wouldnt be the same without you in it.

To Jon Hein, who counseled me through this endeavor from start to finish. A great friend with great advice, and a pretty good on-air partner, too!

To Ross Zapin, my friend of twenty-plus years and a great sounding board. HOW R YA????

To Jason Kaplan, Will Murray, JD Harmeyer, Steve No Longer an Intern Brandano, and Tracey Millman: the best crew Ive ever worked with.

To Richard Christy, Sal Governale, and Benji Bronk, who make me laugh every day.

To Scott Depace (yes, even Scott), Doug Goodstein, Mike Gange, Brian Phelan, and all the guys at Howard TV Ive worked with over the years.

To Tim Sabean (the best programmer ever and all around good guy), Artie Lange, Mel Karmazin, Scott Greenstein, Tom Chiusano, Ronnie Mund, Scott Salem, Jim McClure, Jared Fox, Teddy On the Board Kneutter, Toni Coburn, Jeff Schick, Rob Fichtel, the Howard 100 News team, the Tapes team, Bubba, Ferrall and their respective crews, and my entire Sirius family.

To Karen Rait, Rob Cappilli, and the gang at Record World; Conan Curley, Andre Gardner, Nancy Z., Laura Lackner, Ralph Cirella, and Megan Pinto; Laura Van der Veer, Maria Braeckel, Meghan Walker, and Dan Zitt at Random House; and Ethan Wilson at the New York Mets.

And to anyone I forgot (and Im sure that I did), I apologize. I know youll give me shit on the air. Instead of being pissed off, buy the book and write your name on the line below:

____________________________________________

(YOUR NAME HERE)

Howard Stern has been my boss for twenty-seven years, but hes much more than that to me. Part dad, part big brother, and part good friend, hes taught me so many valuable things over the years. Hes truly the King of All Media, and his accomplishments as an entertainer have been well chronicled, but its his achievements as a person that have had the greatest effect on me.

I was a dumb twenty-three-year-old kid living in my parents house when I met Howard. He was the example I learned from. Howard taught me how to treat people with respect, and as his fame grew he never lost sight of how to treat his staff. Ive never seen him act too big for anyone.

Howard jokes that he tips well because hes Howard Stern, but the truth is that he appreciates how hard people work and hell never treat anyone like they are beneath him. He taught me how to be a good dad, a good worker, and a good person. And I wouldnt be Baba Booey, much less telling my story, if it werent for him.

Thanks, Voff!

G ARY D ELL A BATE is the producer of The Howard Stern Show and co-hosts The Wrap-Up Show on Sirius XM Radio. He and his wife, Mary, have two sons, Jackson and Lucas, and live in Connecticut.

C HAD M ILLMAN is a senior deputy editor at ESPN The Magazine and writes a column for ESPN.com that explores the culture of sports gambling. He is also the author of The Odds and The Detonators and co-author (with Chuck Liddell) of the New York Times bestseller Iceman. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and their two sons.

All photographs are courtesy of the author, with the following exceptions:

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Steve Donnelly

Steve Donnelly

Howard Stern

Howard Stern

Christopher Appoldt

I STOOD ON THE AVOCADO GREEN CARPET of my living room in Uniondale, Long Island. My mom, Ellen, walked out of her bedroom, carrying an overnight bag she had just packed. Our house was a one-story ranch, and I watched her as she inched down the hall toward the living room.

She stopped just a few steps from me and bent down, practically kneeling on the carpet in her dress. She always cared about how she looked, no matter where she was going. Come here, she told me. I was five years old and she wanted to tell me something face-to-face. I walked closer. She hugged me and said, Mommy isnt feeling very well. I have to go away for a couple of days.

I knew she cried a lot. I knew she screamed a lot. And I knew people didnt do those things unless something was wrong. I thought she was physically sick and going to a hospital to get better.

My older brothers, Anthony, who was thirteen, and Steven, who was eleven, stood next to her. They knew what was really happening. So did my aunt Maryann, who had come over to watch us that afternoon.

When my mom let go of me she stood up, smoothed down her dress, picked up her bag, and followed my dad, Sal, out the front door. They were headed for the psych ward at Syosset Hospital.

My parents met in 1947 at Webster Hall, a dance place in Manhattan. He was twenty-two from Little Italy; she was twenty and from Bensonhurst, in Brooklyn. He walked up to me and asked me to dance, my mom once told me. I told him, I heard about all you fellas from Manhattan. Youre all a bunch of gangsters. And he said, Yeah, I checked my gun at the bar. I thought, how sarcastic. That intrigued me.

My friend Anne thought he was so cutehe reminded her of Humphrey Bogart. He had on a pin-striped suit and really did look like Bogart.

My mom was stylish, had a big smile, and loved mugging for a crowd or a camera. In every picture I have ever seen of her, from when she was young to today, she looks happy. There was never any sign in her eyes of the trouble behind them. On Saturdays when I was growing up, shed spend three hours at the beauty parlor getting her hair colored and cut and then would sit with rollers in her hair under one of those huge dryers. She even had a cape and a hat that made her look just like Marlo Thomas in the opening credits for That Girl. She always liked to keep up appearances.

That was true when she was growing up in Bensonhurst, too. Her parents came to America from Sicily and Reggio Calabria when they were both kids. They met in Brooklyn and had seven children over fifteen years. The oldest one, Aunt Josie, was nicknamed the General, because she did a lot of the child rearing. My grandmother worked as a seamstress and my grandfather was a construction worker (my aunts and uncles say he helped build the Empire State Building, but I think people say that about every construction worker from back then). My mom was the baby of the Cotroneo clan. The whole family lived together in a multifamily apartment building my grandfather owned.