Early Life
Ellie Dylan was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but spent her formative years in Columbus, GA. She later explained that growing up in the Deep South during the Civil Rights Movement had a profound impact on her life.
Dylan left Georgia to attend Tulane University in New Orleans and spent her junior year abroad at the University of London. Returning to New Orleans, Dylan graduated with honors, Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude, from Tulane and was accepted by Tulane’s Law School.
Dylan relates that during those college years, she experienced two life-changing events which shaped her future. The first occurred when her freshman English professor gave Dylan an “F” on a major paper she had written, explaining that she would continue to fail Dylan until she worked at her full potential. (This professor later bestowed the honor of Phi Beta Kappa on Dylan upon her graduation in the top percentile of her class at Tulane in 1974.)
During her college years, Dylan was also a disc jockey on WTUL, the Tulane campus radio station, where she played music from The Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, etc. and began to discover the power of the media to create change.
Dylan relates that her passion for radio became such that on every college vacation she attempted to get a job at a “real radio station” in her hometown, only to be told time after time “Women are not on the radio.”
Finally, the summer before she was to begin law school, Dylan was hired to do radio shows on WWRH-FM and WPNX-AM in her hometown. There she posed pointed questions to the likes of David Duke, Grand Dragon of the KKK., and Lester Maddox, controversial Georgia Governor, who is reported to have walked off her show. Thereafter, a local radio station employee told Dylan “You’ll never make it in radio. Because you’re different.”
Soon after, Dylan heard about a nationwide talent search for ‘The Queen of Country Music’ from WMAQ Radio (the NBC-owned Chicago radio station, which covers 38 states and Canada). Dylan sent in a three-minute biographical tape backed by Earl Scruggs banjo picking. Again, Dylan was “different” and won the talent search.
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