JOE ADAMOV

Joe at the Grove Expo in Atlanta. I was showing him a stack of "Monitoring Times" magazines with his interview which appeared in the October 1995 issue.

Joe was born in Batumi, Georgia on January 7, 1920 which is, according to the Russian Orthodox church, Christmas day. If you listen to his radio program "Moscow Mailbag, you will also know that he was born in a bank! (Actually, his father was the manager, and they had an apartment on the second floor.) Although Joe was born in Georgia, he is very proud of the fact that he is 100% Armenian.

He has been with The Voice of Russia for 55 years, and has been doing his question and answer program "Moscow Mailbag" for 40.

During his years with Radio Moscow he has interviewed such people as President Eisenhower, Adalai Stevenson, (who he interviewed in the men's washroom of an airport because the plane's engines were so loud), Eleanor Roosevelt, Walter Cronkite, Hubert Humphrey, Ed Sullivan, Bob Hope, and J.B. Priestly. He also acted as host to Charles Lindberg at Expo-70 in Japan.

I first met Joe in the summer of 1994 when visiting what was then Radio Moscow. We had become friends with Eugene Nikitenko (who does the program "New Market" on VOR) and his wife, and they had invited us to be their guests in Moscow. We went to the radio station a few times with Eugene, and spent a lot of time talking to Joe and watching him do his show. I had always thought that Joe sounded gruff on the radio, and I thought that I would be nervous around him. But, nothing could be further from the truth. I found that he was a lot of fun to be around, and he made us feel right at home. He is probably the most interesting person I know, and when you get talking to him, hours go by like minutes.

The next time I saw Joe was in Atlanta in October 1995. Grove Enterprises used to have an annual forum in Atlanta, Georgia for radio enthusiasts and international broadcasters. It was a wonderful place for anyone interested in the radio hobby, especially for shortwave listeners. We could all get together and talk about radio as much as we liked, and meet the broadcasters. Unfortunately the Expo was very expensive and an unbelievable amount of work for Grove to put on, and it is no more.

Joe was the banquet speaker for the Expo, and my husband and I were honored to be his hosts. It is probably the only time in our lives that we will ever be treated as VIPs at a hotel! If you have listened to Joe on the radio, you will have a very different opinion of him than he really is. He is actually a lot more modest than he sounds. I did a favor for him when he came to Atlanta, and during the International Broadcaster's Forum, when it was his turn to speak, he told the whole audience about it, and I received a standing ovation. Then, when he got back to Moscow, he wrote a poem about me and broadcasted it over The Voice of Russia. That is the kind of man he really is, he values his friends very much.

Knowing Joe also has other interesting moments. Once he wanted me to call NBC news correspondent Bob Abernathy for him. I said "sure, Joe." but I was really thinking, "yeah, right, I'm going to call NBC news and ask to talk to Bob Abernathy, and they are really going to put him on?" Well, we got off the phone, and I called NBC news and said that I was calling for Joe Adamov in Moscow, and they gave me Bob Abernathy's number, and we spoke several times!

Joe on a bus tour while in Atlanta.

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