It’s exhausting just talking to her. She’s got more horsepower than the Energizer Bunny, and she’s faster with her ideas and thoughts than Speedy Gonzales running a mile.
Martha Zoller’s maiden name was Martha Mitchell during the Watergate era. That’s nearly as bad as being named Booth during the Lincoln administration.
She caught a lot of heat for her name. “I learned to deal with it,” Zoller said. “It was a great conversation starter. People would ask me, ‘Where’s John?’”
Zoller was born to Frank and Juanita Mitchell. Both worked in retail, and Martha went to work for the upper-scale Rich’s department stores, which is known today as part of Macy’s. Rich’s enjoyed a long run from two years after the Civil War until 2005.
As a young woman, she said she loved to sing, mostly at church.
Zoller also played the piano but admitted she wasn’t that good. For the most part, not what you’d call an ‘outside girl.’
“That’s the way my mom wanted it,” Zoller said. “She was one of the few women on the street who had a job, and I don’t think she wanted me running around on my own all day.”
Frank Mitchell joined the service before the war and served a few years. When he was about ready to be discharged, Pearl Harbor happened. “Anybody who was already in the service had to stay,” Zoller said. He was later captured and placed in a POW camp.
Frank met Zoller’s mother Juanita at Fort Jackson in South Carolina before he deployed when he first joined. “He was in the New Jersey National guard when they met,” Zoller said. “He rode horseback in New Jersey and became part of a mechanized unit, then was shipped overseas.”
One might wonder why someone would marry just before going into an environment where your chances of returning were not good. “They had to,” Zoller explained. “In those days, couples weren’t having sex before marriage, so if they wanted to, they had to get married. That’s what you had to do back then.”
I suppose that’s as good a reason to get married as any.
Frank was captured in September of 1944, but as was his fashion, he played it down. “My father said the worst thing the enemy did was not feed them,” Zoller said. Fortunately, he later escaped.
The war left him, like many others, with scars that never really healed. He suffered from what is referred to as ‘Survivor Guilt.’” Frank Mitchell had trouble understanding why so many of his younger comrades were killed in the war and survived.
“Because of that he was a functioning alcoholic,” Zoller said. “He’d have a few drinks, and invariably the war would come up in conversation. He was a great guy, but when he was drinking, you didn’t want to be around him at 8:00 in the evening.”
Her father’s sacrifice was something Zoller doesn’t take lightly. His service is not taken for granted. “I tried to write down everything he said,” Zoller explained. “There are records at Rutgers University. Eddie Leonard was one of the four soldiers my father escaped with, and he gave an oral history which confirmed a lot of the stories he told us.”
Zoller took her reading very seriously. “I loved to read,” she said. “I was the youngest of four kids, and I wanted to read everything I could so I could contribute to conversations at the dinner table.” Zoller said her older brother and her father would argue at the table about the Vietnam War. “They had very different ideas about that war,” she said.
She graduated from the University of Georgia on the heels of Watergate. “I met Gerald Ford on the White House lawn and introduced myself as Martha Mitchell from Georgia,” Zoller said. “I think he thought, ‘This kid is playing a joke on me.’”
“When I graduated, I couldn’t find a job in journalism. I was a production major and never thought I’d be in front of a microphone.” She produced training videos for Rich’s, but her position was eliminated during the recession. They offered her a position as an assistant buyer. “My dad was in sales, and my mother was a buyer,” Zoller said. “So, I had some knowledge in the field. It was fun spending other people’s money.”
Zoller has a radio resume most would envy. For eight years, she was named to the ‘Heavy Hundred’ Talk Shows Hosts in America by Talkers Magazine. For three straight years, she was one of James Magazines’ ‘Most Influential Georgians.’
With her show, The Martha Zoller Show, which runs daily on WDUN from 9-11 on weekdays, Zoller said she tries to be open-minded when booking guests. “I’m kind of known as the ‘velvet hammer,’” she said. “I’m open to talking to anybody.” She said she’s happy to bring a Democrat on her conservative-leaning show, someone she disagrees with, and engage in thoughtful and kind discourse.
“I recently had a guest who felt I was going to sandbag him,” she explained. “I gave him a fair shot, even if I asked him something he may not be thrilled to talk about. Since I was fair, they want to come back. I ask them something they want to talk about; then we focus on something more contentious.”
Zoller said on the big talk stations, talkers are less willing to veer from the ‘formula’ of enraging and denigrating those who disagree. “I’m lucky because I work for an independently owned station,” she explained. “I’m in the Metro Atlanta market but not subjected to all the ratings pressure.”
She worked on Michael Dukakis’ campaign in 1988. At the time, Zoller saw him as a conservative Democrat, something she herself identified as. “At one point, I realized I had nothing in common with these people,” Zoller said.
“They were busy bashing people who had achieved success in their lives. I was 27 years old, and I had every intention of being ‘successful,’ so I stayed until the end of the campaign, but that was it between me and the Democratic Party.”
In 2012 Zoller ran for congress in Georgia’s 9th District. She garnered endorsements from Sarah Palin and Sean Hannity and led in five of the district’s 20 counties. But Doug Collins, a three-term member of the Georgia House from Gainesville, prevailed.
Only after all this experience and earning of her proverbial stripes did Zoller enter radio.
I started at WGGA in Gainesville, Georgia. “I think we had about 12 listeners, so I was able to hone my fledgling skills,” Zoller said. “We were too small to have any callers. I had my first show on the Fourth of July, and I’m almost certain we had zero listeners that day.”
After that, it was on to flagship WDUN radio. Zoller said she was excited to work at WDUN, sharing how the sausage was made. After her unsuccessful bid for congress, Zoller wanted to return to radio. “WGAU in Watkinsville, Georgia had a job opening in the mornings,” she explained. Zoller hated it. “Getting up at 3:00 in the morning wasn’t for me.”
In 2005, Zoller was part of a group of radio hosts to broadcast live in Iraq. “The first night in Kuwait, we stayed at the Ritz Carlton,” she said. “After that, we were housed in tents with soldiers. I used my helmet as a pillow, and there was a girl from Detroit who was on suicide watch. I think she was just homesick.”
Even before they went to Iraq, Zoller knew there would be a ton of difficulties with technology, and she wasn’t disappointed. “I was asked why I was the only one who didn’t get mad at everything when something didn’t go right,” Zoller said.
Later they went on to do a week of shows from Iraq, where she met many lifelong friends. “There were no accommodations for women in some areas,” Zoller said. “I slept in a storeroom.”
She thinks her listeners respond to her being so honest on the air. “They love the stories I tell,” Zoller said. “I had a health crisis in November of 2020. It was so bad my husband called the kids to town as he didn’t think I was going to make it.”
“It was Thanksgiving, and my husband asked why my breathing was so labored. That was enough to take me to the hospital. I was so weak I couldn’t walk in the door,” Zoller explained. The doctors immediately placed her in the ICU.
In her rare quiet times, she still reads and will watch some stuff on the television. “I just started watching Yellowstone, and I watched Bridgerton. I like a good Rom-Com and am a fan of the James Bond series.” Zoller wasn’t thrilled with the last one. (Spoiler.) “They killed him in the end. Now they have to reboot the whole series.”
Jim Cryns writes features for Barrett News Media. He has spent time in radio as a reporter for WTMJ, and has served as an author and former writer for the Milwaukee Brewers. To touch base or pick up a copy of his new book: Talk To Me – Profiles on News Talkers and Media Leaders From Top 50 Markets, log on to Amazon or shoot Jim an email at jimcryns3_zhd@indeedemail.com.
