Longtime radio personality Val McGinness dies

Local radio personality Patrick Valére McGinness — known across the Columbus airwaves simply as Val — died Wednesday morning at his north Columbus apartment. He was 67.

Musocgee County Coroner Buddy Bryan said McGinness died of natural causes.

Columbus radio executive Jimbo Martin, who owns PMB Broadcasting, said McGinness had a great voice.

“It was such a deep voice, but he could get wild and crazy, now,” he said.

Like the time he did a radio broadcast in the nude.

“Yeah, that time,” Martin said.

But Martin and others remember the way McGinness turned phrases.

“He worked in the mornings on WCLS. I can still hear it, ‘Spinning those hits while spraying those pits,” Martin said. “He had a lot of phrases, but I remember that one.”

A South Carolina native, McGinness worked in radio and television markets in Columbus, the Carolinas, Milwaukee, Nashville, Montgomery, Ala., and Macon, Ga.

His first Columbus stint came in the 1960s.

“As far as I know, he worked for every owner in town,” said his longtime friend and one-time on-air partner Bear O’Brien. “But I remember when he came back home in 1999, about the same time I did. He was in Nashville and having a rough time. He told me he had one piece of family, and it was his son, Patrick, who was living here and had made Columbus his home.”

McGinness went to work for Martin at PMB.

“I know that Jimbo made a place for him because he wanted him to have a job,” O’Brien said.

Though he worked as a DJ, McGinness was known for his commercial and voice-over work done in Columbus and across the country. He was the longtime voice of the J.D. Kinder and PantARama.

“Val could have made millions with his voice doing national spots if he had found the right place,” O’Brien said. “A lot of times, he just didn’t know who to talk to. His voice was so rich and had great depth. He is old-school, from back in the day when you had to have a voice to be in radio.”

O’Brien tells the story of a national ad that McGinness did back in the 1970s.

“Do you remember the Inertia Nut Cracker commercial?” O’Brien asked. “Val was the original voice. I don’t think he made a lot of money on that. I know when it went national, he didn’t make another dime. I think he might have gotten a couple of nutcrackers.”

Mark Cantrell and McGinness became close friends about 35 years ago when they both worked at WDAK.

“We went to lunch about once every two weeks,” Cantrell said. “In fact, I talked to him on Saturday and he was wanting to go to Georgetown and eat at a seafood restaurant he heard about. We never made it.”

McGinness did commercial work for Action Buildings, the company founded and owned by the Cantrell family.

“The last thing he talked to me about was wanting to get back into commercials — and in my opinion he was the very best,” Cantrell said. “This is what I always said, ‘If you ever imagined what God would sound like talking to you, he would have Val McGinness’ voice.”

According to his wishes, McGinness will be buried in South Carolina next to his mother, Patrick Jr. said.

Besides his son Patrick, he is survived by two step-daughters.

This story was originally published June 15, 2016 at 2:20 PM with the headline "Longtime radio personality Val McGinness dies."