Beginnings were humble, but it was an impressive climb to the top. From the early days at KVOO in his hometown of Tulsa, Okla., to his stints in St. Louis and Kalamazoo, Mich., Harvey's onward and upward trajectory has rarely, if ever, veered far off course. Even when he branched into television and print, people watched, people read. This across-the-board success, as insiders know and Harvey frequently admits, has as much to do with his wife, Lynne Harvey, a former schoolteacher whom Harvey dubbed "Angel" shortly after he proposed to her during the first minutes of their first conversation more than 50 years ago, as it does with Harvey himself. It took Angel a year to say yes, but when she did the duo made history. "She is still one of the daintiest, most feminine creatures I've ever known," Harvey often says, frequently following up the sentiment with talk of her Phi Beta Kappa key.

At St. Louis station KXOK, Angel began writing and producing for her husband, and together they began sculpting the Paul Harvey persona. When, during World War II, Harvey, who'd accepted a post in Kalamazoo, briefly enlisted in the Air Force Air Cadets, Angel assumed the helm. Shortly after his return, they moved to Chicago, where in 1945 he began hosting the postwar employment program "Jobs for G.I. Joe" on ABC affiliate WENR-AM. "Paul Harvey News" went national the next year. In 1951, Harvey moved on to a gig with ABC Radio Networks, and there he remains to this day.

"I was willing to settle for a much smaller responsibility elsewhere," he confessed to "Tomorrow" host Tom Snyder in 1977. "I was rather terrified by the big city."

And although he is rarely seen on city streets or at after-hours events (largely due to a grueling, self-imposed daily schedule that begins at 3:30 a.m. and goes until early evening), Harvey continues to base himself in Chicago, flying to corporate speaking engagements in his Lear jet, commuting via limo from his 27-room manse in River Forest, Ill., broadcasting from his 16th floor downtown studios, near a street sign that reads Paul Harvey Drive.

But why Chicago? Why not New York? Shouldn't a powerhouse like Harvey disseminate the good word from our country's media epicenter? Apparently not.

"I can't keep my perspective in New York City," Harvey explains to those who wonder why he stays rooted in the Midwest. "I'm very impressionable, and after a few weeks in New York I come to think that the sun rises behind the U.N. building and sets in the Appalachians and that's all there is to this country. I want to be out there where the votes come from. I want to see our country with a wide-angle perspective."

Fiery as ever, Harvey continues to bask in his regular-guyness, because those are the kind of guys Chicago breeds: regular ones, middle Americans with broad shoulders (if only figuratively), a taste for meat and a deep-seated disdain for East Coast haughtiness. In short, he continues to convince legions of listeners that he is one of them. Which is mostly true, except for the money, the power and the pipes, those exquisitely burnished golden pipes that recently picked up right where they left off -- "Hello, Americans!" -- for which more than 18 million devotees and countless sponsors were no doubt grateful.

And if Harvey has his way, he'll keep going until he can go no more, or at least until his current contract expires in 2010, whichever comes first. "Retiring," he believes, "is just practicing up to be dead. That doesn't take any practice." As the Voice of America would surely remind you, "Every pessimist who ever lived has been buried in an unmarked grave. Tomorrow has always been better than today, and it always will be."

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