10 Facts About Ralph Emery

Walter Ralph Emery was an American country music disc jockey, radio and television host from McEwen, Tennessee.

Walter Ralph Emery worked as an usher in a downtown Nashville movie theater and as a Kroger stock boy as a teenager, saving money to attend the Tennessee School of Broadcasting under the instruction of Nashville disc jockey John Richbourg.

Ralph Emery first earned fame as the late-night disc jockey on Nashville's WSM.

Ralph Emery later wrote several best-selling books chronicling his memories of the many Nashville singers and musicians that appeared on his various radio and TV shows.

Ralph Emery hosted a late-afternoon program on WSM-TV in the late 1960s, Sixteenth Avenue South, with the same format.

In 1971, Ralph Emery began hosting his eponymous radio show, a weekly, syndicated show that aired daily on country stations in five parts Mondays through Fridays; it lasted until the 1980s.

In October 2005, Ralph Emery launched The Nashville Show, a free weekly webcast with Shotgun Red as co-host.

Ralph Emery then returned to television on the RFD-TV cable network in mid-2007, conducting interviews on the show Ralph Emery Live.

Ralph Emery was among the 2007 inductees to the Country Music Hall of Fame, and in 2010 he was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame.

Ralph Emery died at a hospital in Nashville on January 15,2022, at the age of 88, after a brief illness.