According to a source, Dori Monson died Saturday night at a Seattle hospital. He was a conservative radio host from “the mean streets of Ballard” who worked for a long time in the Puget Sound area. He was 61.
Dori Monson had a very popular three-hour show every weekday and had been a part of the Seahawks radio broadcast team and other local sports for a long time.
KIRO Newsradio called him a “longtime watchdog of government and social issues” and said that the station is working on making tributes to be played on the air.
The company that owns KIRO-FM, Bonneville International, said in a written statement that Monson had a “cardiac event” at home on Thursday and was taken to the hospital.
Dori Monson went to the University of Washington and worked at KING-TV and KING Radio before joining KIRO in the early 1990s.
His lively weekday show, which ran from noon to 3 p.m., often featured state politicians from both parties as well as a quick review of the “fastest 15” news stories. He said bad things about Sound Transit and the Highway 99 tunnel over and over again. Monson’s show could be heard from boomboxes and parked vans at housing construction sites in the neighborhood on any given afternoon.
In 2016, Dori Monson led the girls’ basketball team at Shorecrest High School to its first state championship. He said, “Other than family stuff, that championship run was probably the most exciting thing I’ve ever done in my life.” He also worked an average of 75 hours a week, he said.
Dori Monson was kicked off his show in 2020 for two and a half weeks because he made fun of transgender people in a tweet about birth certificates. Bonneville banned him from hosting the Seahawks’ pregame and postgame shows for the rest of his life.
The station said that Monson enjoyed deep-sea fishing with his coworkers and playing pickleball with his family, even though he had health problems in recent years. He is survived by a wife and three grown daughters who will miss him.
