MIAMI — At 9:45 a.m. Friday, Neil Rogers ran out of material.
After ranting and kvetching his way to the top of South Florida talk radio over the last three decades, Rogers died at Florida Medical Center in Lauderdale Lakes.
Born Nelson Roger Behelfer in New York on Nov. 5, 1942, he was 68. A diabetic who had a stroke on the air in 1990, he had another, and at least one heart attack, in the past year.
Longtime friend and attorney Norman E. Kent said Rogers died of congestive heart failure. He had no immediate family.
Rogers started with serious topics at WKAT in 1976 and retired from WQAM in 2009 as the highest-paid radio entertainer in South Florida, reportedly making $1 million a year.
In between, he worked at WNWS, WINZ, WZTA and WIOD, becoming a broadcast icon who could engage listeners whether he was talking about government corruption, his beloved Toronto Maple Leafs, or disgusting bodily functions.
Rogers lived most of the time in Toronto but returned to Plantation Acres, where he kept a home, for his final months.
Fat, gay and culturally Jewish, though an outspoken atheist, Rogers was an equal-opportunity loudmouth who mocked fat people, gays and Jews along with everyone else.
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