Most Difficult Day

and the things that mattered all of us. And I've I've I've mentioned to you that this program is in this job is what has provided me the greatest satisfaction and happiness that I've ever experienced, more than I ever thought that I would experience. So I have to tell you something today, but I wish I didn't have to tell you. And it's it's a struggle for me because I I had to inform my staff earlier. Today I can't escape even though telling people are telling me it's

it's not the way to look at it. I can't help but feel that I'm letting everybody down with this. With this, this was a day that I will never forget. Certainly none of us who have worked with Russia Land Law will I ever forget. I was on my way to work when I got the call there was going to be a meeting, and instantly butterflies in the stomach. We never have meetings. Maybe two over the last US thirty years, maybe two Rush wants to meet with the staff.

We knew. I knew something was wrong something. Whether you listened every day, you are at the E I B Network and the Russia Limpball program heard on over six hundred great radio stations where every now and then nation's leading radio talk show, the most eagerly intersepted program in America are the stories you've never heard from the people behind the scenes who knew him best and loved him most.

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do good in their honor. Donate eleven dollars a month by going to t to t dot org. That's t the number two t dot org. You are the most generous audience there is and we thank you for your support. So I get to work and we go back to the media room, which is in the back of the Southern Command complex. This was an all hands meeting and later talking to everyone, we all knew something was wrong. Rush. His demeanor was normal. You couldn't see any anxiety. He

started off the conversation. The first few words normal, I asked you all to come today, something to that effect, and quickly we learned the truth. The upshot is that I have been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer, advanced lung cancer, and it was confirmed, got a second opinion, the second depinion and verified what was on the first opinion that it was indeed advanced, and then Rush being Rushed apologized to us. He said, I'm sorry I let you down,

and I let out an involuntary, involuntary scream. No, you can't apologize to us, because I was mortified that he would actually in this what had to be the worst moment of our broadcast lives together as a team, as a as a group of people. He was apologizing to us on what had to be the worst, one of the worst days of his life. And he said that, um, he was obviously gonna seek treatment, seek the best treatment

that there was for it. And whatever else he told us in that meeting, I don't remember because I just felt numb. It's in shock, and I didn't know quite what else to think. Then Rush being Rush thanked everybody for coming together and turned and walked down that hallway back into his broadcast studio. I wish I didn't have to tell you this, and I thought about not telling anybody.

I thought about trying to do this without anybody knowing because I don't like making things about me, but there are going to be days that I'm not going to be able to be here because I'm undergoing treatment or I m hm, reacting to treat I walked down that hall after him and opened the door and went into his his studio. He was standing, and I went over to him and gave him a hug, and I told him that I loved him and that everything was gonna be okay, and that um I felt confident in it.

What what I have not revealed publicly until now was that I had just finished my own boat with cancer. I had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and it was typical of Rush, and the organization Craig Julie Talbot, who runs Premier Networks, and Brian Johnson and our engineers on the West Coast did extraordinary things to allow me to continue working in Maryland, where I moved to for almost half a year while I was being treated. No one knew because I kept working in My work days were

kind of normal. I had my treatment early in the morning and would just go to work. And so I said to myself, well, you know, Russia's gonna beat this. Russia can beat anything. I had the feeling that Russia was invincible, but at the same time that word advanced, advanced, that was a bothersome word. Um, it is what it is.

And you know me, I'm the mayor of Realville. So this has happened, and my intention is to come here every day I can and to do this program as normally and as competently and as expertly as I do each and every day, because that is the source of my greatest satisfaction professionally, um personally, I've had so much support from family and friends during this that it's it's just it's it's been tremendous. Shortly after that, it was showtime. Along comes the theme to the show. Rush opens the

show I couldn't tell. I couldn't tell anything was wrong, typical day show open, strong Rushed, leading off with stories of the day. During the next two hours and forty five minutes, the show proceeds along like any day on the Russian Bulls Show, Rush cracking jokes, Rush being funny, Rush going through a detailed analysis of the news. All of us, four of us are in the control room

at that point. Dawn is the officials demographer. She's taking in Real time transcribing what Russia is saying and what the callers are saying, what the sound bites are. Brian Johnson is there. We have a video monitor of our New York crew, Mike Mamone in the studio in New York. It's a normal day. All of us are trying to keep composure. We just kept looking at each other and trying not to cry and trying not to just just just hold on. You know, Rush is on. We have

to we have to give our usual to Rush. We have to look and and and be engaged in the show. He can't look in there and see us crying. He can't look in there and see us upset. We have to have when when when something's funny, yeah, we we're gonna react with the laughter and the smiles. And when he's you know, talking about a news story that's particularly interesting, We're we're there. I'm screening calls as usual, Dawn's doing her job as usual. Brian is all of us are

doing our jobs. But we have this dread. Dread we know it's coming. After the forty three break little Inside Radio, there Rush comes back, and that's when he told you the media, the rest of the world what was going on, and it sounded just is horrific to us hearing it again as it did that morning. And I told the staff today that I have a deeply personal relationship with God that I do not proselytize about, but I do,

and I have been working that relationship tremendously. Um, which I do regularly anyway, but I've I've been focused on intensely for the past couple of weeks. I know there are many of you in this audience who have experienced this, who are going through it yourselves at the same time, I am, at the moment experiencing zero symptoms other than I don't look. I don't want to get too detailed in this. What what led to shortness of breath that I thought might have been asthma or um. You know,

I'm sixty and I could have been my heart. My heart's in great shape, taking away fine, squeezing and pumping great. It was not that it was a pulimentary problem involving malignancy. So I'm going to be gone the next couple of days as we figure out the treatment, uh course of action, and have further testing done. But as I said, I'm gonna I'm gonna be here as often as I can.

And as is the case with everybody who finds themselves in a circumstance, you just want to You want to push your head and try to keep everything as normal as you can, which is something that I'm going to try to do. But at least now we didn't have to pretend to feel anything other than extreme anxiety, sadness, hopefulness, being prayerful, trying to do our best to give what

little we can to rush during those moments. Within five or six minutes of the announcement, the first breaking news story shows up on television, and we knew from there the life was never going to be the same, and it wasn't. Over the years, a lot of people have been very nice telling me how much this program is meant to them. But whatever that is, it pales in comparison to what you all have meant to me. And I can't I can't describe this, but I know you're

there every day, I can see you. It's it's strange how I but I know you're there. I know you're there in great numbers, and I know that you understand everything I say. The rest of the world may not when they hear it express a different way, but I know that you do. You've been one of the greatest sources of confidence that I've had in my life. So I hope I will be talking about this as little as necessary in the coming days. But we've got a

great bunch of doctors, a great team assembled. We're at full speed ahead on this and it's just now a matter of implementing what we are going to be told later this week. So I'll be back here. I hope to be back on Thursday. If not, it'll be as soon as I can. And know that every day I'm not here be thinking about you and missing you. Thank you very much. Nothing was ever the same after that announcement. Nothing would ever be the same again. So after the

show that day, that big announcement, brush was off. He and Catherine went to the airport where I assume the IB one was waiting, and Off went to begin his treatment. The stunning part of it was, okay, so so now you're dealing I'm we're all dealing with this emotional this emotional weight that felt like suffocation. It consumed your thoughts from the moment you woke up to the moment you went to sleep. You know, it was always there, even when you're working on other things or living your life,

it's always nagging at you. Ruscious got advanced cancer. This isn't good. And there were plenty of tears among us the staff, and again also trying to encourage each other to be hopeful, because after all, this was rushed. This is a guy who had gone completely deaf, which would have been a career ender for almost anyone else. I'm deaf and I can only hear bionically with these very quickly human here has thirty five thousand hair cells each.

They determined the frequency and the sensitivity of the human eerie. I don't have it minor dead. They laid down and died autoimmune. So I have eight man made biological electrodes. Are bionic electrodes that that try to do what hair cells do. And yet he came back and produced and produced and produced and never stopped producing excellent work. Even when he was a hundred percent death. He managed to get in there and do great shows. This is rush. He can do anything. So now you have guest hosts

coming in. They're stunned. And the emotion that Mark and Ken and Todd brought to the show was so genuine and so real. Their admiration and love for Rush it was so touching, and their kindness was just unbelievably touching to all of us. During the course of this series, we'll be hearing from some of Russia's friends, family members, and influential leaders from the political and media worlds. Back in when the Russia Limbaugh program was originating from New

York City, Rush met Rudy Giuliani. They became close friends. Of course, Rudy would go on to become the Mayor of New York City for eight years. Even after Rush left New York for Florida, the two states connected, always in the same forceome at charity golf events. They also worked together with Marvin Shanklin of Cigar Aficionado to raise millions of dollars for prostate cancer research. The Life of Rush Limbaugh Chapter one, narrated by America's Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

I knew what I wanted to do when I was eight years old. How did I know? Well, you know the story. I hated school. It was prison, I just hated it. You know, I'm locked in this place. I'm having to learn about. Whatever you learn about in first grade, you know how to pace things instead of the last place I wanted to be. So every morning, getting ready to go to this prison, this school, my mother had the radio on and she's listening to the guy, a local jock. And this guy sounds like he's having fun

doing whatever he's doing. He's playing records, he's doing commentary, little weather forecast. It sounds like he's having fun. As a deats how I want my day to be. I don't want to begin my day in drudgery and something I don't want to do, but I have no choice. You have to go to school. If ever a man was born for radio, it was Rush Hudson Limbaugh the Third. He entered this world in January of n right in

the heartland of America, Cape Gherardo, Missouri. He was born into a family of lawyers who enjoyed success at nearly every level, and he almost seemed destined to be the same. His paternal grandfather, Rush Hudson Limbaugh the First, served as a United States ambassador. His father, Rush Hudson Limbaugh the Second, was a lawyer, as was his uncle, and even his younger brother David was also since gone on to becoming

a bestselling author, but no Rush had different plans. As you can imagine, a deviation from the family business wasn't received all two Well, even Rush would have said later, there's no way my dad could have anticipated that Rush would break all and being phenomenally successful, not going the conventional route. So in the end it just worked out for the best. So Russia's family initially frowned upon his aspirations for a career in radio, they didn't completely ignore

his passion for broadcasting. The age of nine, Rushwood broadcast from his own bedroom using a toy radio given to him by his parents that could only transmit throughout his house. There was a device called a Rimco carat Velle, and it was the most amazing thing. My parents got it for me for Christmas one year, and my mother actually dutifully put a radio on her lap and I would go upstairs where the bedroom was, and I would have

my phone. And you had to have an external microphone to put into the speaker of the phonograph that you were playing records on. You had to move the microphone to your mouth when you were doing DJ stuff, and then you'd hould the microphone near the speaker for the phonograph to play the record, and my mother would dutifully sit down there and listen to this, and that the quality was just was was horrible, but it allowed me to get started on on living out my my dreams.

As time passed, Rush came to believe that his family had a change of heart about his pursuit of broadcasting. Even though the family didn't understand it, the fact that I hadn't quit it was enough for them to encourage me to stay in it. And I did, and all

that happened happened, and it's it's been so rewarding. It has been so so meaningful to me, and there have been so many people that have made it possible, among them all of you, thankfully for the rest of us, My friend Rush Hudson Limbo the Third spent the next seven decades in his relentless pursuit of broadcast excellent, and he set the standard that will be very very hard to beat. Not long ago, Mike Lindell, the inventor of My Pillow, and his team fit me for my very

own my pillow. They also introduced me to their other incredible products, like their mattress topper sheets, towels, slippers and more. Sleep is important to me and I assume to you too. It's time you give my Pillow a try and see for yourself. Listeners have helped build My Pillow into the incredible company it is today, and Mike Lindell wants to give back to you. Now. Get great discounts on My Pillow products by going to my Pillow dot com right

now and clicking on the radio listener special square. You'll see offers up to sixty six percent off on products like their pillows, mattress topper, and Geeza sheets as well or new products like their slippers, weighted blankets, robes and waffle blankets. All My Pillow products come with a sixty day money back guarantee ENTO promo code icon that's I c O N. The next time we saw a rush, everything was different. It had to be different. We were

in a pandemic. This was COVID. Russia's got advanced lung cancer. He's gonna be going through treatment that will compromise his immune system and knee germ that touches him could be fatal. So not only were we masked, but there was no more contact. That control room was off when rush came out of the control room during the breaks to go to the kitchen. Nobody could go. We couldn't have physical

contact with him at all. We had to keep our distance because no one could take the chance during this pandemic that a sneeze, a cough, anything could come near him for fear that it would complicate, perhaps fatally, his already precarious position. And for us, that's that's that's a hardship because we were also used to I'd go into the studio every single day before the show. I mean

it's part of it. I'd go in there. We talked for a few minutes sometimes, I just you know, if he looked like he was really having, ah, you know, a stressful kind of morning, I just maybe just rub his shoulders a little bit. Hey, let me give you a little bit of you know, a shoulder up. See whether you know whatever it was, it was, and it was it's hard to explain. We all have those of us that were with Rush every day, Brian, Dawn and myself,

it's we were own family. I mean we saw each other to spent more time with each other than we practically did with anyone else for decades. Right, So we're we're our own family. We all had our different you know. Rushwood asked Brian to take care of certain things, especially um iPhone giveaways, iPad giveaways. Brian was always the point man to get stuff out the door for Rush and and to do other things. Um, I had different responsibilities.

Dawn had an ongoing communication with Rush that that that that frankly, Brian and I didn't have. She was, as she would say, I'm the girl and I'm the boss. So her, her, Dawns a communication with Rush was different than anyone else's. And ever because she had a different kind of bond with him, and and and and it was it was infects just to watch sometimes you know. Um, she would say things and I'd say, I know, she

just didn't say that, Yes she did. Um. And And like I said, we were all kind of our own little family in there. And we never had many visitors. I mean, we did have visitors occasionally, you know, people would come in, Um the great work that Catherine and Rush did for for charity. Once in a while someone would come in with with regard to that, the great work on the books. Uh. They did contest and so we'd have some of the contest winners come in and

join us for a day. Um, some of Russia's close friends as golf buddies or or like Gay and Stanley Gaines would would stop in every maybe once a year, maybe once every two years. But for the most part we were in there by ourselves doing that show. And now to not be able to have any contact with Rush, physical contact. I don't want to sound selfish, because of course we we wanted. We we were praying and hoping

that Rush would get better. But I think that was difficult on all of us because we were just so used to being, you know, so open with him, and now we were just also worried. And so the treatment started and for the first few weeks it seemed like everything was going well, and then the side effects came in. And Rush always from day one said he didn't want to be that cancer patient on the air. He didn't want want to live his life letting the cancer define him,

and so this was key. I think most of us, or some of us, if we got a diagnosis like that, would just say, Okay, thank you, had a great run at this career. It's been wonderful. Bubbye. I'm gonna do my bucket list. I'm going to, you know, enjoy myself. I'm going to see places in the world that I haven't seen while I still have the energy to do it. I'm gonna spend the time that I want hanging out with just the people I want to um and UM guess what. That's what Rush did. He spent time with

the people that he wanted to his audience. Russia's bucket list was to give everything that he could to the audience out of a sense of gratitude and thankfulness and appreciation for the wonderful life that this audience had provided for him. And he said those words so eloquently at times. I understand now what Luke Garrick meant, because I certainly feel like that. I feel extremely fortunate and lucky because

I have outlived the diagnosis. I've been able to receive and here and process some of the most wonderful nice things about me that I might not have ever heard. There were two or three moments in the year where Rush did talk about his treatment. One was particularly grave when he indicated that they'd have to try a new approach, and that was kind of a red flag for me. That's like, hmm, this it's not going as expected. I think it was a red flag for all of us.

There was the moment's mere Thanksgiving, the Thanksgiving show as we progressed, where Russian made it a point to speak very poignantly about out how much the audience meant to him and as many days as he could be there he was there. I remember him saying that, and you know, it's so funny. I still think about this a lot. He said, there will come a time when I will no longer be able to do this, but until then, I'm gonna do this is many days as I can.

And to me, I wanted to ignore the first part of that, that that they're there will come a time when I can't do this. Of course, we all know that that's reality. There's a time in everyone's life when life changes, when whatever has gone on before is not going to go on again. This is life for all of us. But to have it on a stage before seven million or more people the audience, by the way, kept growing and growing and growing and never stopped growing

into his thirty third year. To have this that I am going to do this as long as I can do this showed you where his love was. He loved his wife, He loved what he did for others through the charities and through the philanthropy. He loved all of that. But Rush made no secret about it. He said it, and it was jest, but it wasn't. I was born to host, and you were born to listen. And until the very end that was Russia Limbaugh born to host with timent on loan from God, and we we're there

to listen and to enjoy that broadcast. I think perhaps the moment I knew something was terribly wrong would be later in the year, near Christmas. I've been very lucky, folks, and I can't tell you how many, how many ways you I when this kind of thing befalls you, it's hard not to become self focused. It's hard to not just think of yourself, and it's it's hard to think that everybody's gonna drop what they're doing and deal with

with me, with you. You have to guard against that because this is to the family, This is as disrupting, it's as upsetting as it is to me, and in some cases even more so. So. You can't I can't be self absorbed about it when that is the tendency when you are told that you've got to do date. You have an expiration date. A lot of people never get told that, and so they don't face life this way. That Christmas broadcast, his last Christmas broadcast with us, was

incredibly special to me. It was the worst. It was the the precursor to the worst Christmas of my life. Because I was so devastated emotionally after that broadcast that I didn't go out Christmas. I didn't want to be around anybody. I just wanted to stay home and mope and cry and feel miserable because I could tell in that broadcast that this man who had spent the entire year giving everything that he had to give was perhaps not going to be here the following Christmas. This was it.

My point in all of us today's gratitude, My my point in everything today that I shared with you about this is to say thanks and to tell everybody involved how much I love you from the bottom of a sizeable and growing and still beating heart, still beating heart. It was just something in the way that he delivered the message, and later on he privately told us, you know, I didn't expect to be here this long after that diagnosis, and that was something else that was chilling, and he

kept using the word terminal. It had changed, his lexicon had changed from having advanced lung cancer to having terminal lung cancer. And he said it more than once because he wanted us to know this is terminal, and he knew it was terminal. Now, silly me. I'm still thinking that whatever this next treatment is is going to reverse all of this, and it's not gonna be terminal. And until the day that Catherine announced his death, I still believed that he would find some way to survive this.

But I also know that when God wants you to come home, you're coming home. Regardless of who you are, what your station in life is, how important you think you are, how important the world thinks you are, none of that matters. When it's time to go home, You're going home. And of course, not wanting Rushed to suffer, there is also solace and that he is not suffering. And I will tell you that some of those days, at the end of the show, you could really see

what giving it all meant. Rush could barely move after the show. Some some days you can see just how much those three hours had taken out of him. You couldn't tell it at all during the show. It was These shows were flawless, some of his better shows ever. But when that show was over, he was done. He was exhausted. At one point he said, I could barely stand up. This disease had taken such a toll on him. We could see him losing weight. He had grown the beard,

which at first kind of reminded me of Hemingway. And then later on he started to even to me look gaunt through the beard. His complexion changed, so you could tell he was going through it, but you couldn't tell it from listening to him because he put it on on the table. Even after the disappointments of election Day, still maintained a positive attitude right through that awful holiday season. There were some other moments in the holiday season that

we're We're precious. One day stands in particular, and that was a celebration of Christmas that the four of us had with each other, Rush, Dawn, Brian and myself, and he asked us to come into the studio and we did, and it was the first time in the year that we had contact with him, and it was special, and it was so special that I almost don't want to

talk about it because it's like a jewel. But I will tell you this, Rush Limbaugh greatest broadcaster of all time in my eyes, and I've known many great broadcasters, but beyond that, one of the most courageous human beings I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. And the way that Rush handled his final challenge, he left nothing on the table. He gave it his all. Thank you for joining us for the first episode of Russia Limbaugh The Man Behind the Golden E I B Microphone. Next episode

you'll meet the Inner Family. Two people I referenced in this episode, Dawn Patchynsky Brian Johnson were there with me with Rush for twenty years through the control room as this genius did his radio program. Join us next episode. Russia Limbaugh The Man Behind the Golden E I B Microphone is produced by Chris Kelly and Phil Tower of Best Producers in America. Production assistance Mike Mamone and the

executive producers Craig Kitchen and Julie Talbot. Our program distributed worldwide by Premier Networks, found on the I Heart Radio app or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. This is James Golden, This is both Snerdley this is James Golden. I'm honored to be your was for this in every single episode of Rush Limbaugh, the man behind the Golden E I B microphone. Thank you for being with us.