Jo Maeder

Jo Maeder is an American writer and voiceover artist. She is the author of the memoir When I Married My Mother, published by Da Capo Press/Perseus and Vivant Press. She has also written for The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and More Magazine. In 1977, after spotting station bumper stickers and giving away prizes as Y100/Miami's "Y-onic Woman", she became their first female disc jockey, and one of the first female Top 40 DJs in the United States. Her air name was "The Madame." She was the first woman in that market to host a morning drive radio program: "Up and At 'Em with the Madame" on WINZ-FM/I-95. In 1984 she joined Jay Thomas as co-host of the WKTU/New York morning show. On July 13, 1985, WKTU became WXRK/K-Rock and she became known as "The Rock and Roll Madame". Her show often followed Howard Stern's in the six more years she remained with the station. In 1993 she co-hosted a talk show on WABC as herself, and in 1995 she joined Z100 using her real name. From 1995-2000 she taught a course on radio for N.Y.U.'s continuing education department.
On April 13, 2011 she organized and hosted the first Triad "Bookup" at Bin 33 restaurant in Greensboro, NC, to "promote long-form reading in a short-form world." The public was invited to show up with any book of their choosing and read it to themselves. Maya Angelou issued a statement supporting the concept.
August 21, 2012, Jo Maeder opened Mama Jo's House of Dolls on collectibles site Ruby Lane to find homes for her mother's vast doll collection. The dolls are now living all over the world. Many can be seen on the Facebook page for the shop. Her essay about the pain and joy of doing this appeared in The New York Times May 9, 2013.
Opposites Attack: A Novel Inspired by True Events was published in April 2013. Her novel NAKED DJ, based on her long radio career, was published in May 2016.