Back Stories: Getting Our Foot In The Door At The NYC Marathon

NEW YORK (WCBS 880) – The station's coverage of the New York City Marathon started with former General Manager Ed Kiernan, who recalls meeting the race's founder, Fred Lebow.

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"I was a runner and I got to know Fred Lebow, who's terrific, a tiny bit. I approached him at a couple different opportunities when I was the general sales manager, and it was difficult and he had other stations at the time," he says. "When I became general manager, I made it my goal to get to him, to break through that a little bit. It wasn't that he wasn't interested in the station doing coverage, he just felt like at that time everybody was going to cover the event anyway.

"He had other events in the city, half marathons – one for each borough. I said to him, 'I will help you with those, if you give me the New York City Marathon.' And that was the thing that got his attention. We wound up getting much more access to him and to the New York City Marathon, which was really what it was all about anyway. And that's how we got our foot in the door."