'Uniquely strange.' The life and times of WFAN's quirky but authentic Al Dukes.

"He’s awkwardly genuine," Boomer Esiason said.

"He’s uniquely strange," Craig Carton said.

"His mind is so bizarre," Jerry Recco said.

"He’s quirky," Chris Oliviero said. "He’s weird. He’s bizarre. He’s a lovable guy, but he’s weird."

So it goes for Al Dukes, the longtime WFAN morning show producer widely respected for his work, and widely ribbed by colleagues for his idiosyncratic and self-described "highly regimented" approach to life.

When Gina Marcello first started dating Dukes 6 ½ years ago, she would hear Carton, then the morning co-host, say things about him on the air that left her crying — and not from laughter.

"I was like, ‘I can’t believe Craig said that!’ " she recalled. "He’d say, ‘You can’t be offended.’ Over time, I was like, 'OK, OK, I understand the shtick on the radio.' But in the beginning, I would get upset. I don’t anymore."

Making fun of Dukes, 52, might be radio shtick, but he comes by his persona naturally, which is part of the charm.

As Esiason put it, "The secret to his success and longevity is the fact he doesn’t give a [expletive]. He doesn’t care what you think about him. He doesn’t care what you think about the way he lives.

"And he’s not afraid to talk about it. So the great thing about Al Dukes is he is genuine."

That has helped make him an effective producer over 15 years at the station and a supporting character as well.

Regarding the former, morning co-host Gregg Giannotti said, "Al has a great ability to understand what stinks and what doesn’t."

Regarding the latter, Oliviero, senior vice president at WFAN’s parent company Audacy, said the keys to Dukes’ success are his blunt honesty and his "everyday guy" persona.

Dukes has parlayed that into a podcast, then a 15-minute segment before the start of the 6 a.m. morning show and now an entire one-hour "Warmup Show" alongside Recco beginning at 5 a.m. Dukes and Recco both called their show together the favorite part of their day.

Dukes even had a brewery near his home in Bradley Beach, New Jersey, name a beverage for him: "Al’s Boring Beer."

Said Oliviero: "Al is one of those rare producers who clearly has transitioned into a legitimate, marquee, on-air personality."

A fan of Stern and Letterman

Dukes grew up in Colonia, New Jersey, a middle child between two sisters. His father worked for Delta Airlines at Newark Airport, his mother as a hospital dental office manager.

He was an "obsessed" fan of both Howard Stern and David Letterman, which helped foster a love of radio and of comedy and a new career path after abandoned attempts at college courses in computer science and accounting.

One day Dukes saw Letterman interview an audience member who said he was studying radio. Dukes was unaware of such a thing. He soon was signing up for that major at Kean University and began to flourish as a student.

Later, he went to graduate school at Indiana State. Why Indiana State? Because Letterman is from Indiana and Dukes was curious about the state.

What followed was a meandering path typical of the industry.

Dukes worked in Tampa for several years at a station that flipped to sports talk, his first experience in that genre.

Then in 2001, he moved to WNEW-FM in New York, where he produced "The Ron and Fez Show" and made two crucial connections — with Carton and Oliviero.

Oliviero was producing the morning "Sports Guys" show with Carton and Sid Rosenberg, and Oliviero and Carton were impressed with Dukes’ personality, radio knowledge and work ethic.

"We were two fledgling radio producers who would commiserate every day over lunch about how we could do a better show than the hosts on the air," Oliviero said, laughing. "We’d be criticizing everything . . . We hit it off."

Oliviero recalled Carton one day finding a notebook that Dukes had left out after a late shift.

"It was just a bunch of random ideas," Oliviero said. "Al had pages and pages of bizarre radio topics written down. Like, ‘Should we blow up the moon?’ It was psychotic stuff."

Dukes held a variety of radio jobs, including producing for the infamous David Lee Roth when Roth replaced Stern at K-Rock in 2006.

"That was a four-month hell run for him," Oliviero said. "But he survived it and proved to all of us that he could deal with anything."

Dukes was working in the corporate offices of WFAN’s parent company when Don Imus was fired by the station in the spring of 2007.

Oliviero, by then a CBS Radio executive, and WFAN boss Mark Chernoff chose Esiason and Carton to replace him.

"Mark Chernoff basically came to me and said, ‘Do you have any producers in mind?’ " Carton recalled. "Not that I was in a position to make demands, but I said, ‘Yeah, if we’re going to do this, it’s got to be Al Dukes.’ "

Carton knew Dukes wanted to get back into producing, and he already was in the company.

"I told Boomer that if we’re going to do this right, that’s the guy we have to have," Carton said. "He agreed and went along with it, and the rest is kind of history."

Said Oliviero: "As a manager, you always want to put people you trust the most into those critical spots. Al’s the guy I trust the most when it comes to radio instinct."

The show caught on quickly and was a ratings success. Then, exactly 10 years into its run, Carton was arrested on federal fraud and conspiracy charges.

His colleagues naturally wondered about the show’s future. "I would have thought we could not have lost Craig out of that group, because he was so dominant," Dukes said.

Dukes argued for stability to keep the audience on board, with Recco mostly working alongside Esiason that fall as the show retained its ratings strength.

In January 2018, Giannotti signed on as Esiason’s co-host. The rest of the roster remained intact, including engineer Eddie Scozzare, a WFAN institution, and the show continued to deliver solid ratings.

Oliviero credited Dukes for the "critically important" role he played in navigating that rocky time.

Soon Dukes also was playing a more personal role in the Carton aftermath, visiting his old friend in prison during the year he spent there from mid-2019 to mid-2020.

"Having Al in my corner personally, forget about radio, meant the world to me," Carton said. "I can never repay that . . . That meant so much to me in so many ways that it’s hard to even put into words.

"I feel somewhat indebted to him for that and will for the rest of my life, because it takes a real friend, a true friend, to do that."

Not a fan of guests and callers

Marcello is a communications professor at Saint Elizabeth University in Morristown, New Jersey, which fits well with dating not only a radio professional but a serious student of the business.

"We legitimately will have hourlong conversations just about radio," she said. "He’s thought about this, not just been part of it, but really thought very deeply about it. He’s very, very strong in his opinions."

For example, Dukes resists booking most guests, believing they are a drag on ratings because listeners prefer hearing from the hosts themselves.

He is not a huge fan of callers, either.

"The callers are terrible," he said. "The listeners, I love. The callers, for the most part, are terrible."

The callers skew older than the overall audience, and often commit one of Dukes' cardinal sins: Reciting their history and longevity as a team’s fan before making their point. "That’s a turnoff for me," he said.

Dukes said screening callers is the least-favorite part of his job. "And yet I would not allow anyone else to do it," he said. "I feel like I’m good at it. But it’s frustrating."

Early to bed, early to rise

About those Dukes quirks: They are no act, and his discipline is a good fit for a job with unusual demands.

Morning radio is a grind for everyone. But in Dukes’ case his decision to move to the Jersey Shore, which he came to enjoy when visiting Marcello at her nearby home there, added to his early commute.

He goes to bed around 8 p.m. weekdays, rises at 2 a.m., leaves home around 3, gets to lower Manhattan shortly after 4, goes on the air with Recco at 5, leaves the WFAN studios around 10:45 and is home around noon.

Then he walks his greyhound, Whimsy, whom he adopted in 2020, and prepares to start the cycle again.

His eating habits are similarly regimented, from coffee and Stella D’oro cookies with which he begins his day to the grilled chicken and sweet potato with which he ends it.

Any deviation from the routine is fraught. Recently Marcello bought steaks and offered to visit Dukes’ condo to cook them dinner. On a Tuesday.

"He goes, ‘OK.’ Then he goes, ‘Well, what time?’ " Marcello said, indicating she sensed a familiar hesitancy. "I said, ‘I’ll be there around 4, 4:30, and we can start cooking.’ "

She called arranging weekday activities with Dukes "very hard. There are a lot of sacrifices . . . When he doesn’t sleep enough, he gets really, really grouchy."

Dukes agreed, calling it a "constant struggle" to set aside personal time. "I’m not flexible at all," he said. "If my girlfriend says, ‘You want to come over for dinner?’ I feel I have to, because that’s what you do as a human being.

"But I also know I’m going to go there with a bad attitude of: I don’t want to do this."

Other than that, the lifestyle suits someone who admits to getting "very agitated if something’s off a little bit."

Said Dukes: "I like it. It gives me comfort. It’s anxiety-alleviating."

Early in the pandemic, Dukes adopted Whimsy, having heard that dogs reduce anxiety for many people. "It gives me more anxiety, because now I’m constantly worried about the dog," he said.

Dukes now calls getting a dog "a terrible idea" that he regrets. "I wouldn’t give her back, because I do love the dog," he said. "But it’s one-and-done for me."

Walking Whimsy around the neighborhood — and discussing their adventures on Facebook and on the air — has made Dukes one of Bradley Beach’s most recognizable citizens.

He is not shy about weighing in on local issues, especially people who litter and/or do not pick up dog waste.

And Dukes is not shy about talking politics beyond Bradley Beach, especially on social media and particularly when it intersects with sports, a dynamic he noticed during the Colin Kaepernick kneeling controversy.

Initially, it seemed to him most media members felt one way about the subject.

"Then I found people on Twitter who were in the media that were saying the opposite," he said. "I was like, wow, I didn’t know you are allowed to say these things . . . I just never even knew that side of the media existed."

He said he sometimes cannot help himself in tweeting about political issues, even though he knows it often gets people in trouble. He said that regardless of one’s politics, what he dislikes most in that realm is hypocrisy.

"I look at it as consistency," he said. "Be consistent. If you’re against this thing for this reason, then you should be against another thing that is similar."

Willing to speak up

While Dukes has developed his on-air vibe using a dry wit and deadpan delivery, his primary responsibility is producing, and his colleagues appreciate his skills in that area.

Carton attributed Dukes’ success to being "unwavering in his belief of what’s good radio." Many producers, Carton said, just try to "go along with the flow" and are not willing to tell the hosts they are wrong if necessary.

"He stands apart in that regard," Carton said. "That is not to knock any other producer, but we empowered Al very early on, because I respect him so much, to be an equal voice in the preparation of a show."

But even excellent radio producers usually go unnoticed by the public. Not so with Dukes.

"He’s so quirky and so unique, and it’s so authentic and organic," Carton said. "It’s not manufactured at all. He doesn’t care if you like it or don’t like it or how you react to it. That for me became kind of Seinfeld-ian."

Carton called Dukes "a brilliant comedy writer." Perhaps. But he also is just being himself.

"That’s Al," Marcello said. "It’s a little embellished for the radio, but there’s a lot of truth in his persona."

The Al's Boring Beer backstory

Being a WFAN producer with a beer named for you is "pretty cool," Dukes said.

But what makes it even cooler is that as Duke’s mother, Carole, told him, both of his late grandfathers were big beer drinkers and would have been extra-proud of Al’s Boring Beer.

"They’d be really impressed," Dukes said of his mother’s message to him. "You’ve made it. You’ve had a beer named after you."

Not that his ancestors were into IPAs such as the creation on which Dukes partnered with the Bradley Brew Project near his home in Bradley Beach.

One grandfather was such a Schaefer fan that when he died in 1980, his wife kept three of his bottles of it in her refrigerator. When she died, Dukes inherited them.

"I said, ‘I’m going to keep them alive,’ " Dukes recalled. "I took them from her fridge and I have them in my fridge. They’re next to the Al’s Boring Beer."

The story of Dukes’ beer began in 2020, when he complained publicly of litterers leaving empty bottles around his neighborhood.

That led to a fan of WFAN’s morning show and of Bradley Brew Project suggesting a branded beer of Al’s that would carry a message on its cans discouraging litter and encouraging recycling.

As for the name, it evolved from other Dukes projects such as his @alsboringtweets Twitter account and his Al’s Boring Podcast. According to Bradley Brew Project co-owner Chelsey Ziolkowski, it fits.

"We came up with this simple, clean, crisp recipe; it’s pretty boring," she said. "It is basic. It’s not overwhelming. There are no adjuncts in the beer. So — simple and boring."

Dukes worked with the brewery on the flavor. His beer is 6.5% alcohol by volume, moderate for an IPA. He said he enjoys IPAs but sometimes favors lighter fare, as he did during a recent interview at the bar.

"I’m a lightweight," he said. "I pick and choose my spots."

Some proceeds from Al’s Boring Beer go the Boomer Esiason Foundation in support of Dukes’ morning show colleague. It is available at the brewery and at select stores in New Jersey.

"I still haven’t caught the beer bottle bandit," Dukes said of the litterer (or litterers). "But it was never a Bradley Brew Project beer. It was one of those fugazi brands . . . The people who go to Bradley Brew Project recycle their beers."

By Neil Best

neil.best@newsday.com@sportswatch

Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.