SEATTLE — Longtime KOMO weatherman Ray Ramsey has died at age 87.
The fast-talking, wisecracking, plaid-jacket-wearing Ramsey was a fixture in Seattle-area homes from 1965 to 1985. He died Sunday, according to KOMO-TV. The cause of death wasn’t released.
Ramsey sprinkled invented
words and jokes into his broadcast, and sometimes people could hear the camera crew laughing in the background.
“Dad used to say it was all about personality, personality, personality — that’s what people are drawn to,” his daughter Jodi Lien told The Seattle Times.
“No one, NO ONE, could talk faster than Ray, not even those people they use for disclaimers at the end of car commercials,” KOMO-TV reporter Bryan Johnson wrote in an email. “The amazing thing was that although nobody can understand the car commercials, everyone could understand Ray.”
Ramsey was born in Spokane, an only child raised by a single mother, Lien said. His first broadcasting job was on Spokane’s KREM radio.
In 1964, he and his wife, Jo, moved to Seattle. He worked as a rock ‘n’ roll deejay at KOL before moving on to do the weather for KOMO’s TV and radio broadcasts.
Sometimes, Ramsey started the day on the radio from home at 6 a.m., then taught at the Bellevue junior high before heading to KOMO in Seattle in the late afternoon, where he would stay at the station until after the 11 p.m. news, said video editor Joe Wren.
Steve Pool, who succeeded Ramsey at KOMO, called him “Dad.” He said Ramsey was one of the most supportive — and genuine — people he’s known in broadcasting. “There was no difference in his personality on-air and off. If there’s anything I learned from him, it’s that: Just be yourself,” Pool said.
Ramsey slipped comfortably into low-key retirement.
“When he walked off the set he was done. He didn’t have any desire to stay in the spotlight at all; he was happy to be out of it,” Jodi Lien said.
He enjoyed gardening, crossword puzzles and spending time with his wife, particularly in one of their favorite places, Reno, Nev. Ramsey liked to gamble, his daughter said, and loved to play the ponies at Longacres, now Emerald Downs. He even had a race named after him, said his daughter, the “Ray Ramsey Purse.”
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Information from: The Seattle Times, http://www.seattletimes.com
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