CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Roy Brown is sitting inside the studio from which he and his co-hosts broadcast the top-rated “The Maney, Roy, and LauRen Morning Show” for Charlotte’s Kiss 95.1, and reflecting on the struggle he went through before deciding to come out on the air four years ago.
“There’s a lot of gay radio hosts out there, but doing a radio show in the South,” says the 29-year-old Roanoke, Va. native, “I was very afraid that if I came out, people wouldn’t want to listen to me anymore. And I would get fired. Not because I’m gay, but because I had no audience. So I was afraid to be me, and I was really unhappy during that time.”
He continues on with his story, then moves to other topics. Late in the conversation, we circle back to those remarks, to underscore how yes, there are a lot of gay radio hosts out there, but how there are not a lot of them in this city.
How, in fact, there perhaps are none here besides him.
“I think — I think — I have the gayest show in Charlotte. I think I might be the only one. I mean, between me and Nicole (Weaver) — my producer’s gay — we are very gay. ... That’s why I used to be so annoyed when I would see Charlotte Pride team up with another radio station. I’m like, What? Like, have you heard them? Have you heard us? I’m gay! Partner with us!
“Yeah, so I’m the only (publicly out) gay radio host, I think. Gay morning show host for sure.”
Four years removed from his coming out, he quite clearly is no longer uncomfortable talking about being gay.
Brown continues to endure his share of struggles, however, and a couple are rather serious — for instance, he’s battled PTSD since being badly injured in a 2013 haunted hayride accident, and he’s had major challenges with losing weight.
And then there’s the dilemma he and his fiance, Sterling Johnson, currently face: when to finally, officially, tie the knot.
Or, wait a second. Could the rumors that they in fact are already married be true?
From police station to radio station
Brown’s earliest serious career aspirations centered around being in law enforcement.
At 14, he joined the Police Explorers program at the Salem Police Department in Salem, Va., a short drive from his hometown. He was issued a uniform, he rode around with officers, he helped the department in various tasks, like traffic control.
Then, at 15, his father bought him a mixer and two speakers, and he started a little mobile DJ service catering to parties and weddings.
He apparently earned enough of a reputation that, during Brown’s last year of high school, Opie Joe — a personality at 94.9 Star Country, a Roanoke country-music station — reached out to him, told him he also was a mobile wedding DJ, and asked to borrow Brown’s speakers for an upcoming gig.
They eventually struck up a friendship that led to Opie Joe convincing management to hire him at the station as a board operator; from there, Brown worked his way through jobs in its promotions department and as overseer of commercial breaks during the midnight-to-6 a.m. shift.
In 2011, while he was still a teenager, he was tapped to host a night show. It took less than two years for the job to go to his head.
“I was young, and egotistical,” Brown recalls. “I had really good ratings, and I wanted more money, and I went to go ask for more money ... and they wouldn’t give it to me.”
So he quit — and returned to his original career path, by joining the Roanoke County Police Department as an emergency dispatcher.
But he only managed to stay away from radio for a year before applying for a night-hosting job at K92, a Top-40 station in Roanoke.
Brown was actually working for both the police station and the radio station when he found himself in the unfortunate position of needing emergency services himself.
The horrifying haunted hayride
It’s a harrowing story, as Brown tells it.
On Oct. 11, 2013, he and a group of seven other people had climbed into a wagon attached to a tractor that was to transport them from a corn maze at Layman Family Farms in Blue Ridge, Va.
“The (tractor) was running, it was nighttime, and a light was shining back onto the trailer. We’re sitting there, and I remember I was on my phone looking and the (tractor) started moving. Which I was like, Oh, that’s odd,” he recalls, since the wagon wasn’t yet full. “We were the last group of the day, and I knew there were (staff talking about) trying to wrap up. I was like, Maybe they’re just gonna come back for everybody else.
“So we’re driving, we’re kinda going, and I’m still not thinking anything of it, and it starts picking up speed. And I was like, Geez, this guy is hauling. Then finally it flies off into a ravine, and crashes ... and everybody was thrown off of the (wagon). I was able to get out and call 911, before I ended up passing out.”
Multiple people were trapped under the wagon until authorities were able to free them. Three — including Brown, who suffered a traumatic brain injury — were hospitalized. The culprit? A broken spring that caused the tractor to not stay in park.
In the aftermath, he began suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, which can be triggered by everything from clanking metal and the smell of gasoline to seeing the aftermath of an accident in a movie or on the TV news.
He also started to gain weight.
‘The hardest thing I’ve ever had to deal with’
By the time he arrived in Charlotte in 2015 and was paired with Steve Maney and LauRen Merola to co-host the Kiss 95.1 morning show, Brown had gotten pretty heavy.
He was pretty unhappy about it, too. Especially when people pointed it out.
Asked about a 2019 interview in which he recounted a time when he says comedian Rob Schneider fat-shamed him during a visit to their studio, Brown says: “He — in the most condescending way — was giving me health tips, on how to lose weight. And it’s just rude. Every single person that’s overweight, it’s not news to them. They can look in the mirror. They see it. They’re not shocked by it.”
He’s found some success with some of the weight-loss programs he’s tried. Over about a year and a half, from 2015 to 2017, he lost 100 pounds. But he’s never been able to keep the weight off.
“Weight,” he says, “is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to deal with.”
Which is saying something, considering he hid the fact that he was gay for years.
‘A really uncomfortable situation’
Brown met Sterling Johnson on Tinder in Charlotte about five years ago, around the same time he, Maney and Merola agreed to participate in “My Big Fat Fabulous Life,” the TLC cult-hit reality show starring Greensboro native Whitney Way Thore, who briefly worked at Kiss 95.1 as an intern during filming of the series.
Thore didn’t know Brown was gay, because even though he was dating Johnson, he wasn’t out yet publicly. And by the end of the season, Brown had become a key character, as well as an object of Thore’s affection — albeit initially unbeknownst to him.
“I was put in a really uncomfortable position,” he says, “because I ended up watching the season we were on and realized what they were doing — this whole love-story thing. So I went to the producers at the time, and I said, ‘Hey, I don’t know what you’re hoping to get, but it ain’t gonna happen.’
“I was like, ‘I’m gay, and I’m not public with it. I’d really love your discretion and respect with me handling this.’ I felt almost trapped, because we had this massive film crew here, and when she came back for next season, it was all about me and her. I was trying to figure out how to tell her no, while also not coming out.
“The reason why I didn’t want to come out is because I didn’t feel comfortable with my parents finding out through the TV show. I didn’t feel comfortable with the radio audience finding out through a TV show. I felt like there were other people that needed to know before millions of strangers across the world knew.”
He came out to his parents and introduced them to Johnson in 2017; then in January of 2018, he came out on the air while speaking with a listener who had called in to confess that he’d been lying to his father about his sexuality.
“So I’ve been dating a guy,” Brown said during the broadcast, casually, with no fanfare, “and I told my dad that I’m gay, and he’s from Blue Ridge Mountains, and I think a lot of my life, Anonymous, I was afraid to tell him ... (We) have now the best relationship. The best. And it’s gotten so much better in time.”
Both Brown’s real family and his radio family were nothing but supportive.
He still was battling the weight he was carrying on his body, but the weight on his shoulders was gone.
It’s a freedom that’s allowed him to take better care of his mental health — and to take the next step in his relationship.
Accentuating the positive
A week and a half after giving a solo interview at Kiss 95.1’s studio at Beasley Media Group’s South End offices, the conversation moves to the living room sofa of the Charlotte home he and Johnson bought together in 2019.
“I feel so negative,” Brown says, shaking his head, as he looks over at Johnson to his right while stroking their beagle Cali, who is curled up between them. “I feel like I need to retract a lot of statements.”
But while he might harbor some negative thoughts about his past, he couldn’t feel more positive about his future.
It’s not just because “The Maney, Roy & LauRen” show is Charlotte’s No. 1 morning show in several key demographics, including women 18 to 49.
It’s also because he’s finally getting a firm handle on his PTSD — thanks in no small part to Cali, who just recently became a full-fledged medical alert dog after completing a local service academy program that trained her to detect and help him cope with PTSD attack symptoms.
It’s because, too, that even though he hasn’t achieved his elusive goal of eventually getting back under 400 pounds (and someday, hopefully, less than 300), Brown has found a sense of peace about the best way for him to get there.
“What I’ve been doing, through therapy, is being OK with eating some bad food,” he says. “Understanding the nutritional value of that food. Understanding the consequence of that food. But not bullying myself or being mean to myself or thinking I’m horrible for eating a cheeseburger for lunch, when you should be having a salad.”
He recently lost 50 pounds.
More than anything, though, he’s excited about his future with Johnson.
Brown proposed to him in June of 2020 at Barcelona Wine Bar in South End, where they shared their first kiss. Johnson said yes, but wanted to do his own surprise proposal, too: So, last Thanksgiving weekend, he turned the tables and popped the same question to Brown at a winery near the Blue Ridge Parkway.
They have not set a wedding date. But...
‘You’re fueling the speculation!’
“There’s so much speculation that we’re already married,” Brown says, laughing. “Like, listeners have said, ‘I spotted Roy at the courthouse.’ ‘I spotted Roy going into the office where you get your marriage certificates.’” (He was actually there to get his concealed-carry license.)
“When we went to Napa at the end of the summer, people were like, ‘Oh, is that a honeymoon?’ Plus the fact that we wear these rings” — he and Johnson hold up their left hands to show the silicone bands (their “real” ones are in their bedroom) — “they immediately assume that we’re already married.”
“Look,” Johnson says, “if someone wants to plan the wedding, we are ready.”
“And pay for it,” Brown chimes.
Johnson: “That would be great.”
Brown: “Plan and pay.”
Johnson, chuckling: “We don’t really like planning that much. We’re busy.”
At that point, they’re asked, for the record, once and for all, if they are already married, and Johnson quickly replies: ”No, no, no. We’re not.”
But within a few minutes, after the conversation has moved on, Johnson launches innocently into a story by saying: “One time, before we were even married —” He stops himself, then restarts by saying, “Er, not married, ’cause we’re not married — but before we were engaged —”
Brown feigns disgust, rolling his eyes and sighing as he interrupts.
“You’re fueling the speculation!” the radio host hollers. “You’re fueling that!”
Then laughter spills out of both of them, and if there’s any conclusion to be drawn from this exchange, and from the look on his face — from everything, filtered through the context of everything he’s been through over the course of his 29 years — it’s this:
Roy Brown, at last, is one very happy man.
