Some billionaires put their money into space rocket launches. Others invest in longevity treatments to extend their time on Earth.
But when New York grocery and oil magnate John Catsimatidis tapped into his fortune for a passion project, he chose WABC, an AM radio station well past its glory years.
Catsimatidis , 77, acquired WABC in 2019 and has turned it into the most listened to talk station in the U.S., according to Nielsen data, reaching more than 400,000 listeners a week.
He is also on the air every day as part of the station’s award-winning evening program “Cats & Cosby,” where he and veteran journalist Rita Cosby hold a daily salon with like-minded friends and big-name political figures.
In a windowed studio overlooking Third Avenue in midtown Manhattan, Catsimatidis can be seen scrolling through his mobile phone and looking as if his mind is elsewhere while on the air. But he quickly snaps into delivering a concise opinion or question whenever Cosby directs him.
“John can look like he’s taking a little bit of a nap, but he’s always ahead of you in the conversation,” said radio consultant Jerry Crowley, who first gave Catsimatidis his own program at Salem Broadcasting’s WNYM.
Catsimatidis is among the circle of media commentators who speak regularly with President Trump, whom he’s known for 45 years and strongly supports. The relationship has made WABC part of the national political conversation.
In December, Trump revealed the U.S. military’s first land strike on Venezuela to Catsimatidis during a morning call into WABC, to the surprise of some national security TV correspondents.
Catsimatidis may become even more well-known soon thanks to his cameo role in the Oscar-nominated film “Marty Supreme,” which will be available April 22 to the 60 million U.S. subscribers of streaming service HBO Max.
“Marty Supreme” director Josh Safdie cast Catsimatidis as Christopher Galanis, a financial backer of the table tennis phenom played by Timothée Chalamet in the film. Safdie told Vanity Fair he liked Catsimatidis’ “larger-than-life regional business man” look, which he noticed when the mogul ran for New York City mayor in 2013.
Rita Cosby and John Catsimatidis in WABC’s New York studio with former NY Gov. David Paterson and Edward Cox.
(Justin Jun Lee/For The Times)
Catsimatidis added some verisimilitude to the role as he once rented a basement apartment to Marty Reisman, the table tennis champion who inspired the film.
“He put 20 pingpong tables in there,” Catsimatidis said. “And he was such a hustler. He’d give you 18 points and he’d still beat you.”
The brief scene required five days of shooting. “Even though it was a pain in the ass to do so many takes, I admire Josh for being a perfectionist,” Catsimatidis said during a recent interview at his office, where a plate of peeled or cut fresh fruit is always nearby.
After the film’s Christmas release Catsimatidis was getting calls from people he had not heard from in years.
“I didn’t know how important a movie this was,” Catsimatidis said. “When Josh said he had a role for me, I said, ‘OK. Why not? It’s a new adventure.”
Catsimatidis has had more than his share of adventures.
His father was a lighthouse keeper, living in solitude on the Greek island of Kandelioussa for 16 years before entering a family-arranged marriage with his mother. The couple emigrated from Greece to the U.S. when Catsimatidis was a toddler.
Catsimatidis grew up in West Harlem and studied electrical engineering at New York University. But he showed a talent for selling as a teenager when he hawked bottles of aftershave lotion out of the trunk of his Buick. In the late 1960s, he bought out a 50% share in an upper Manhattan supermarket where he worked as a clerk and, to the chagrin of his parents, dropped out of college to work full time in the grocery business.
John Catsimatidis during a live broadcast of his WABC radio show “Cats & Cosby” at the station’s New York studio.
(Justin Jun Lee/For The Times)
By the age of 25, he had opened 10 stores under the name Red Apple and was earning $1 million a year. In his 30s, he became a jet pilot and owned a regional airline. Investments in real estate and an oil refinery he bought out of bankruptcy have driven his current net worth up to $4.8 billion, according to Forbes.
Business success earned Catsimatidis a seat at the table in national politics. He backed the 1988 presidential campaign of fellow Greek American Michael Dukakis and donated to Bill Clinton. By 2016, he was aligned with Trump, as are most of the hosts on WABC, including Newsmax’s Greg Kelly and Fox Business Network’s Larry Kudlow.
Catsimatidis has been a fixture in the New York tabloids for decades, not always in a positive way as he’s had legal battles with unions at his businesses over the years. He now deals with the occasional furors that arise when managing outspoken on-air personalities in the current divisive political media environment.
He clashed with Rudy Giuliani, who is suing Catsimatidis for removing the former mayor from his hosting role at the station in 2024. Giuliani was pulled off the air after he refused to stop talking about false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election — a matter that cost Fox News $787 million in a defamation suit.
When WABC’s fiery morning host Sid Rosenberg is mentioned, Catsimatidis bows his head and performs the sign of the cross.
Rosenberg, a relentless Trump supporter, called New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani a “radical Islam cockroach” during an on-air rant last month. Catsimatidis had the host deliver an on-air apology and issued one of his own online.
Catsimatidis, who is also chief executive of the Gristides supermarket chain, is no fan of Mamdani’s policies and is among the New York business types who declared they would leave the city if the Democratic Socialist took office. But he said he maintains a cordial relationship with Mamdani and offered advice on the mayor’s proposal to open city-run grocery stores.
“I don’t care if you’re a socialist, a Republican, a Democrat or an independent,” he said. “As long as you have common sense.”
Catsimatidis made millions from buying New York real estate on the cheap in the 1970s when the city was in deep economic trouble. So he recognized a bargain when his Red Apple Media group bought WABC for $12 million from Cumulus Media.
WABC was the most listened-to station in the country during the heyday of top 40 radio in the 1960s — riding the wave of the Beatles — and well into the ‘70s. The station’s booming 50,000-watt signal at 770 on the AM dial reached 40 states.
WABC switched to an all-talk format in 1982 and boosted the careers of conservative radio personalities Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.
The station’s fortunes declined under Cumulus, which was crushed by debt and losing ground to new competition from digital media.
The challenges did not discourage Catsimatidis, who recalls listening to WABC on his transistor radio as a student attending Brooklyn Tech High School in the 1960s. He loves the station’s legacy, and brought back its famous jingles with the dial position and call letters put to the tune of Rodgers and Hart’s “Manhattan.”
Catsimatidis even hired one of WABC’s legendary disc jockeys, Bruce Morrow — known to millions of baby boomers as Cousin Brucie. Morrow, now 89, plays oldies on Saturday nights.
But the investment has gone beyond nostalgia. After taking over, Catsimatidis told its president, Chad Lopez, to drop its weekend infomercials and replace them with locally produced shows. The decision meant walking away from $2.7 million in annual revenue, but Catsimatidis insisted.
“John said, ‘I want to make WABC great,’” Lopez said. “Once we went to more live and local programming, you could see the audience start coming in.”
The station also reduced its commercial load. A typical talk station carries up to 21 minutes of ads in an hour. WABC carries about six to eight minutes per hour at most.
WABC does not break out its finances, but Catsimatidis said it turns a profit, which he puts back into the business. The station has expanded its digital presence, creating podcasts of its daily programs and bite-size versions of longer interviews on the station for downloads.
Every bit of news made on the station’s programs is quickly turned into social media content. The livestream of the station attracts listeners in all 50 U.S. states and 176 countries. WABC programs are syndicated to 532 radio stations in the U.S., including 16 in California such as KINS in Eureka.
Catsimatidis speaks of grandiose-sounding plans to take on the BBC or replace the Voice of America with WABC content, while keeping an eye out for other distressed radio properties he could turn around.
“Whatever we can buy for nothing, we’ll buy,” he said. “They became distressed because of stupid management.”