W Russell Withers Jr. got his first radio job in 1955 working as an announcer at KGMO in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. In 1967, a young kid named Rush Limbaugh went to work at KGMO, which his father partially owned. Rush left Cape Girardeau to pursue his dreams. As FM was growing in popularity, Mr Withers bought the AM station in 1970 and became a radio station owner, in addition to a number of very unrelated businesses like owning a lobster processing plant in Costa Rica.
Over the years, through careful control over the operations, Mr Withers acquired around 30 similar small town radio stations in the midwest. In 2008, Clear Channel offered to sell him 6 radio stations for $4 million, which he agreed to. Now at normal retirement age if he wasn’t the boss, Mr Withers is getting his daughter Dana prepared to take control of a portion of the Withers empire.
Since the company is privately held, there is not a lot of information about the company, but if you’re interested, the profile is [here]