Ruben Garcia, longtime San Antonio radio voice and TPR’s VP of Technology and Operations, dies at 66

Source Domain: www.tpr.org

Ruben Garcia, Texas Public Radio’s Vice President of Technology and Operations, died on Tuesday, Feb. 3, following a sudden brain aneurysm that struck him on Feb. 1. He was 66.

Garcia was hired by Texas Public Radio in 2011 as a production announcer, and soon began working with the engineering department, ascending to VP of Technology and Operations in 2024, where he oversaw broadcast operations, including the station’s automation system and IT. Garcia is also The Voice of Texas Public Radio, heard daily on all stations through many on-air sponsorship and promotional messages, and, of course, the top-of- the-hour time check that you can always count on.

Before arriving at Texas Public Radio, longtime San Antonio listeners would have known Garcia’s voice from many commercial radio stations, and as a traffic reporter with Metro Networks.

Born in May of 1959, Garcia’s start in the industry began in 1975 while still a teenager in Laredo, at KLAR-AM. He soon worked his way to San Antonio, where one of his early gigs was hosting on KZ100, “The Hot FM.”

Ruben’s career took him to Houston for a short time, and back to San Antonio. He worked for KSAQ-FM, and at Cox Radio from the late 1990s through the early 2000s, including stints on Y100 and KONO-FM.

Roger Allen, former program director at Cox, recalled that Garcia was “a humble, very nice person” with “a golden voice.”

“He was so smooth in his delivery, and so natural,” Allen said.

Commercial radio was a fiercely competitive business in the 1980s and 1990s, and according to former colleague Chrissie Murnin, Garcia’s “mischievous streak” helped him win the audience on more than one occasion, even if it meant a bit of trickery. Murnin remembered that Garcia, then working the night shift, called a competitor’s DJ on their station hotline, pretended to be the station engineer, and instructed…

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