Mike Rhyner

Your Dark Companion
Mike Rhyner

Mike Rhyner’s professional life has been one long argument that Dallas radio works best when it sounds like Dallas. He entered the business here at KZEW in 1979 as an unpaid intern and production assistant, then became the sports voice on the John LaBella and John Rody morning show and an assistant to program director Tom Owens. He stayed at The Zoo until 1986, long enough to move from grunt work to a recognizable on-air presence. A 1982 fan letter from imprisoned would-be assassin John Hinckley Jr. became one of the stranger footnotes of that era. From KZEW he went to WBAP’s sports department, then through a brief KZPS stint and GTE On Call sports line work before the idea that defined the rest of his career.

In 1994 Rhyner helped create SportsRadio 1310 The Ticket, Dallas-Fort Worth’s first all-sports talk station. He helped assemble the original lineup and co-hosted *The Hardline* from the station’s first day through December 2019. The show, first with Greg Williams and later with Corby Davidson, made him the station’s public face and, to many listeners, its patriarch. ESPN named him among its Sports Radio Personalities of the Year in 1997, 1998, and 2003. The Texas Radio Hall of Fame inducted him in 2014. He retired from The Ticket in January 2020 after twenty-six years. In 2022 he returned on 97.1 The Freak, an all-talk experiment that folded when the station reverted to music in 2023.

What he does now is the job without the transmitter. After a 2021 hobby version of the same title, Rhyner relaunched *Your Dark Companion* in May 2024 as a Stolen Water Media production with partner Becca Moore. He has said the first run was something to occupy himself; the interviews were strong and then vanished because he did not treat the show like a business. Version 2.0 is built to last: a dedicated home studio, video as well as audio, social cuts, Patreon extras, and live drops at 5 p.m. Central every Monday and Wednesday. By late 2026 the catalog had passed 250 episodes, most of them near an hour. Co-host Michael “Grubes” Gruber — a former Ticket and Freak board operator and longtime team music director for the Stars, Mavericks, and Rangers — handles drops, booking help, and the second chair. Rhyner’s own brief for the show is blunt: “Whatever I want it to be about on a given day; is what it is.”

The guest list is the proof that the format is not sports talk in thinner clothes. Rangers writers and voices, former players such as Rusty Greer and Mark McLemore, Brad Sham, Tim MacMahon, and other DFW sports regulars still come through. So do Texas music figures: Kirby Warnock on *Buddy* magazine and regional documentary work, Tim DeLaughter of Tripping Daisy and The Polyphonic Spree, keyboardist Lewis Stephens, Chad Stockslager, and Steely Dan analyst Izze Stein. Other hours have gone to WFAA meteorologist Jesse Hawila, charity operators, a behind-the-scenes walk through the Majestic Theatre, live tapings at Dudley’s, and a Dallas radio-history session with Jon Michaels that ran from Q102 through The Zoo and into The Ticket. Greg Williams has returned to the microphone with him as well, years after their public split on *The Hardline*.

Stolen Water Media now sits around the show rather than the other way around, with companion programs and a small production team handling video and operations. Rhyner still plays drums in the Tom Petty tribute band Petty Theft, but the professional center is the podcast: two hosts, a guest, and the same interviewing style he used on The Zoo and The Ticket, freed from clocks and commercial clusters. The intern who walked into KZEW in 1979 is still working. The signal is just on demand.

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