After 43 years in radio and the last 25 doing mornings in Little Rock AR, Corey Dietz will retire from iHeartMedia Rock “100.3 The Edge” KDJE Jacksonville AR at the end of the year.

Dietz first came to Little Rock in 1998 when he and longtime co-host Jay Hamilton joined then “Lick 101” KDRE for mornings. The duo would follow the Alternative brand to 96.5 and 106.3 before exiting at the end of 2002. They would join newly launched “100.3 The Edge” KDJE in March 2003 before moving to sister Classic Rock “Magic 105” KMJX the following year. They would then quickly move back to KDJE before Hamilton departed the show in 2012. Dietz has been teamed with former producer ‘Angry’ Patrick Beam since then.

Prior to coming to Little Rock, Dietz worked at stations including WOHO Toledo, WFYR Chicago, and KLOU St. Louis. He and Hamilton would then be teamed in mornings at CHR “Q94” WRVQ Richmond in the early 1990s and also worked together at AC “Lite Rock 106.5” WLTF Cleveland. Dietz has also published multiple books and previously radio radio industry site RadioEarth.com.

On a blog post on the station’s site, Dietz wrote:

I have some personal news that I’d like to share with you. It’s a bittersweet moment for me, but I’ve made a big decision and I want to tell you personally. After much contemplation and reflection with my wife and family, I have decided to retire at the end of December. This decision was not easy, and it’s one that I’ve thought about for some time. But, I believe it’s the right time for me to do this.

Few people who work in Radio get to leave on their own terms but I’m being afforded that privilege and I am grateful to management for that.

I’ve been doing morning radio in Central Arkansas for the past 25 years and it’s been a great run. For most of the past 43 years, I’ve been getting up at about 3 a.m. to do a morning show. Actually, in total, including college, I’ve been doing radio for the past 50 years. The good news is: I finally think I’ve got it down!

I want to say how incredibly grateful I am to each and every one of you who has tuned in over the years to “Corey and Patrick in the Morning” and “The Corey & Jay Show” before that. Your support and loyalty have meant the world to me, and I can’t thank you enough for inviting me into your lives, your homes, and your vehicles each morning.”

It has been the privilege of my lifetime to share countless mornings with all of you, and together, we’ve laughed, we talked, and in many cases you may have even grown up listening to this show. It’s been a wonderful journey, and I wouldn’t change a thing. I hope you feel the same.

Of course, I couldn’t have done it alone. I want to express my heartfelt thanks to Patrick my partner of the last 10 years, to Jay Hamilton my previous partner of 22 years, to Kevin Cruise our Program Director, Keli Williams who heads our sales department, Dave Ashcraft our Senior Vice President, our advertisers who have supported the station, and everyone here at iHeartRadio who come together each day and make this radio station a wonderful place to work. They are some of the most talented and dedicated individuals I’ve had the pleasure of working with.

Of course, the Chili Cookoff is our main focus right now and we expect this year’s 17th Annual Halloween chili cook-off to be huge. I can’t wait – it’s the highlight of my year.

I’m going to release a book about the history of the show within the next couple of weeks. It will be a lot of fun to read, it will bring back a lot of memories for longtime listeners, it will feature a lot of inside information about how we did the show over the years with graphics and photos you haven’t seen in a long time and many you’ve never seen because they are from my personal archives. It will be available on Kindle and in paperback. It will also be free on Kindle for a short time when it’s released.

In November, we’re going to begin a retrospective of the past 25 years. Several times each morning we will feature archived segments from both “Corey and Patrick in the Morning” and “the Corey and Jay Show” reaching all the way back to 1998. I don’t think you’ll want to miss any of that. The retrospective will continue until I leave right before Christmas. But, I’m not leaving until we have one more big Christmas Party where listeners can win an invitation. And that should be some affair.

So, once again thank you for allowing me to be a part of your mornings and your lives. And let’s just have the best time together for the rest of this year!