Who

The self-described "King of All Media" and archetypal shock jock, in 2005 Stern vanished from the public airwaves for the cushy confines of Sirius Satellite Radio. His wife is Beth Ostrosky.

Backstory

Stern was born in Queens and raised on Long Island to Jewish parents—he is not, as he's often said on the air over the years, half-Jewish and half-Italian. It was as a student at Boston University in the '70s that Howard got his start in radio, DJing for the campus station; he jumped into the biz after graduation, developing his act at stations in Westchester, Hartford, Detroit, and Washington, D.C., before returning to New York and joining WNBC in 1982. His on-air antics soon led to controversy. In 1985, the suits at NBC canned him for, among other less-than-classy stunts, his "Bestiality Dial-A-Date." But Stern used the firing to drum up more publicity—he rented a hearse and led a mock funeral cortege for the network—and he was back on the air a few months later when he was picked up by New York's WXRK. Thanks to Mel Karmazin's Infinity Broadcasting, which owned WXRK, Stern was soon syndicated to stations nationwide. He's been alternately offending and entertaining audiences all over the country and revolutionizing talk radio—for better or worse—ever since. In 2004, after close to two decades on "terrestrial" radio, Stern announced his departure for Sirius Satellite Radio. He left for good in 2005, taking along his merry band of collaborators including Robin Quivers, Garry Dell'Abate, Artie Lange, and Fred Norris.

Of note

Stern's Sirius deal offered satellite radio its first chance to truly compete with regular radio; for fans, it offered up the prospect of an entirely uncensored Stern, free of FCC restrictions. But the media spectacle was equally spurred by Stern's massive pay package: Sirius committed to spending more than $500 million on Stern over five years as part of a bid to drive subscribers to the satellite service and compete with its then-rival, XM. So has it paid off? Yes and no. His move did make a big difference in driving new customers to Sirius—within a year, Sirius boosted its number of subscribers from 600,000 to more than 3 million. (Which was good enough to fulfill the terms of Stern's contract, which had pegged hundreds of millions in payouts to his ability to lure new customers.) But it's also been said that some Sirius execs were hoping to see even higher subscriber numbers, and some critics still question the economics of the deal. Nevertheless, there's little question that having Stern on the roster at Sirius (which is now headed up by Mel Karmazin, reuniting the old pals) strengthened the company's hand considerably when it later entered into merger negotiations with XM.

Legal file

The only party really unhappy about the Sirius deal—well, except for Stern fans too cheap/poor to pay the $12.95 a month for satellite radio—was CBS Radio. The company and its longtime chief exec Les Moonves were especially displeased that Stern's final few months on terrestrial radio served as a running commercial for his move to Sirius, and later sued him for $218 million in damages for "misappropriating CBS Radio air time for his own financial benefit." Stern attacked Moonves in the press—and showed up on Letterman wearing an "I Hate Les Moonves" t-shirt—before the case was settled for an undisclosed sum.

Drama

All that deliberate button-pushing has earned Stern plenty of enemies for the past two decades ("rude, vulgar, infantile, exhibitionistic, narcissistic, manipulative and often plain out gross," the Times once commented). Over his career, he's been the target of ire from the FCC, corporate radio management, religious conservatives, politicians, women's rights groups, and black organizations, not to mention Kathie Lee Gifford, whom he pummeled daily for about a decade. He's paid millions in fines for offenses committed on the air and witnessed more than a few noisy protests staged outside his office. Even worse: In the '80s, a Buffalo man was accused of threatening to kill Stern (not because he was offended by the content, but because his local radio station had dropped Stern's program and he personally blamed the shock jock for his "loss"). And in the '90s a stalker named Michael Lance Carvin was sent to prison after making repeated threats on Stern's life.

Campaign trail

As part of a publicity stunt, in 1994 Stern ran for Governor of New York on the Libertarian Party ticket. He later dropped out from the race rather than comply with financial disclosure requirements.

On the side

Howard hasn't had as much success in other media. In the '90s he had a TV talk show on WOR which was cancelled after two years. He later had a show on E! that was essentially a video broadcast of bits of his radio show. But his 1993 book, Private Parts, which detailed his career and his many tangles with radio management, was a bestseller. (And was later turned into a 1997 movie of the same name.) He also published Miss America in 1996.

In person

The 6'5" shock jock has admitted to having had plastic surgery on his nose and liposuction to remove fat in his face. He's long been suspected of having had some help maintaining that mane of his, but he's steadfastly denied it.

Personal

After years of vowing he would never marry again, Howard tied the knot with longtime girlfriend Beth Ostrosky in October 2008. Despite his libidinous on-air persona, Stern played the field for less than a year following his divorce from his wife of two decades, Alison Berns, and the beginning of his relationship with Ostrosky—although that was long enough to date the likes of model Angie Everhart and the former Mrs. Mike Tyson, Robin Givens. Stern has three daughters with Berns—Emily, Debra, and Ashley. Emily, an NYU grad and actress, appeared in the tabloids in late 2005 when she dropped out of an off-Broadway play in which she appeared nude.

Habitat

In 1998, Stern purchased a 59th floor, 4,000-square-foot condo at the Millennium Tower on the Upper West Side for a reported $5.9 million; he doubled the size of the spread in 2007 when he purchased the apartment directly below it for $15.1 million. Stern's Hamptons real estate dealings, meanwhile, have been frequent fodder for gossipmongers. After selling his house in Amagansett because of its accessibility to prying fans, Stern paid $20 million for an ocean front lot in Southampton, where he's building a large home. In the meantime, he was renting Broadway producer Terry Allen Kramer's ocean front house, until she sold it for a reported $34 million. Stern then inked a lease on another ocean front house in Southampton for a record breaking $1 million for the summer.

No joke

Stern has an English bulldog named Bianca Romijn-Stamos.