Good Talk

Bethany Linderman has to be comfortable “owning whatever comes out of my mouth,” she says. If she was too worried about it, she admits, she would never say anything

Since last spring, Linderman has been talking Baltimore radio listeners through their morning commutes after she joined MIX 106.5 as co-host of MIX Mornings with Reagan Warfield.

“I’ve had the need to entertain since I was a baby,” Linderman says. She dreamed of being a TV producer but grew up in a New York town that was too small to have its own TV station. In high school, Linderman interned at the town’s lone radio station. Later, she worked for the Home Shopping Network and ESPN but discovered the behind-the-scenes work she sought just wasn’t as fun as being on the air.

“I did what I wanted to do, but it didn’t give me the same feeling as radio,” she says, adding that radio is “vintage and cool — and still going strong after all these years.”

Weekdays, her alarm goes off at 3:45 a.m. and she is on air by 5:30. Much of the show is planned ahead of time — and the rest “happens throughout the morning,” she says, adding that “we make the radio show, but the listeners make it awesome.”

On this particular morning, listeners called in to share the names of their cars. A week earlier, listeners discussed whether a credit card being declined on the first date was a relationship deal breaker — a key element of a character’s back story on the popular TV show, “This Is Us.” On TV, the first-date faux pas made the character likable. In real life, listeners said, it was not at all charming.

“Anything and everything can be part of a show,” Linderman says, which means she could bring up something weird a neighbor did or something a friend shared with her. “Every conversation I have, everything I see, I turn it into something.”

Moving around a fair amount is also part of the career and a little harder to do now that her two children are school aged, she says. Linderman’s last station was in Albany, New York and says coming to Baltimore was a “happy accident.” But the location appealed to her, she adds, because the city is halfway between New York and Tampa, Florida, where she went to college.

Initially, her brother worried about the crime here, but Linderman says outsiders don’t always understand there is so much more to Baltimore. She finds people here to be “very kind” and admits to being “highly entertained” by how proud Marylanders are of their flag, seafood, and of course, Old Bay.

“If you are going to bring someone a gift from Baltimore, you have a lot of options,” she says with zero radio irony.

As for her well-heard cohost: “Reagan is literally the best,” she says. “If you had to design someone to work with, you’d design Reagan. It’s a delight to come to work because of him.”

What She’s Wearing:
Trimmed plaid ruana, $129, classic cotton shirt in gingham, $70, and layering necklace, $50, all at Talbots; Black pencil skirt, $150, Sympli, Chezelle; MIREYA Mary Jane shoe, $120, L’Artiste by Spring Step,
Ma Petite Shoe

Model: Bethany Linderman
Photographer: David Stuck
Stylists: Ebony Brown and Bethany Linderman
Makeup: Ida M. Slaughter
Location: CBS Radio