Just when Tad Wissel had stopped chasing his dream job, it came looking for him.
Wissel and his buddy Jon Bindley had gained a local following for their hilarious social media videos of all things Pittsburgh. You might remember their Steelers playoff hype videos or recap of two Pittsburghers discussing the Fern Hollow Bridge collapse, created on the side while Wissel worked behind the scenes in local radio.
“What’s up?” said one in the phone call simulation.
“Not … the bridge,” answered the other.
“Dude. Insane.”
The videos led to podcasts and lots of laughs — some of them decidedly R-rated.
Eventually, real life intervened.
After working more than a decade in radio, first as a promotions coordinator for Fox Sports 970 and then creating content with youth for SLB Radio Productions, Wissel became a Pittsburgh firefighter in 2023. Three years in, he had a career he loved, a strong union, a secure pension and lovable colleagues. He married his longtime girlfriend, Katie, and the couple bought a house in Bloomfield.
The dream of being an on-air radio personality — once his ultimate goal — faded away.
Then everything changed.
In November, comedian Bill Crawford announced he was leaving the “Randy Baumann and the DVE Morning Show” on 102.5 WDVE.
Wissel knew the show well. As a broadcast journalism student at Edinboro University, he interned at WDVE. His Fox Sports 970 job put him in the same building, as both stations are owned by iHeartMedia.
When Baumann called and asked him to fill in for Crawford, he jumped at the chance. He figured it was temporary and fitting the gigs into his firefighter schedule was doable.
He performed a bit on the air, “Fantasy Football Team Eulogy,” that had co-hosts Randy Baumann and Abby Krizner cracking up.
“You may have finished 10th in the league but you were seventh in points, which is sort of similar to the Tomlin no losing seasons thing,” he said during the bit. “But still, no one can take that away from you.”
He was having a blast. The producers kept bringing him back as a fill-in.
Then, in May, came the offer that upended his world. WDVE wanted him full-time for the morning show.
The opportunity carried extra weight because Wissel had convinced himself it would never happen.
Flashback to 2012: He was working at the station when Jim Krenn left the morning show and Crawford took the seat.
“I thought, ‘Oh man, that’s it,’ ” Wissel said. “ ‘This is a job people don’t leave. It’s never going to open again in my lifetime.’ ”
Now, 14 years later, there it was.
The move would mean far less physical risk than battling blazes, but it came with a different kind of gamble — stepping into the uncertain world of radio. And mornings would start daily with a 4:40 a.m. wake-up.
He lost sleep as he struggled with a decision.
“I had just gotten my life together, just grew up,” Wissel told me. “I was in a comfortable place.”
Still, the lure of joining the morning show and telling jokes for a living was too strong. Katie had his back the entire way — she knew a rare opportunity to realize a dream was in reach.
Wissel, who is 40, took the job.
“It’s so fun to be able to write and joke around with hilarious people every morning for work,” he said. “That’s the job.”
As far as the early morning hours, he’s making it work. “No more school night shenanigans for old Tad,” he said.
It helps that he genuinely adores Pittsburgh. Growing up in Squirrel Hill and Imperial, he never felt a desire to leave. He understands the city, its quirks and the people who live here. He brings that energy to the show — of someone who knows Pittsburgh inside and out.
He knows not to push the cliche Yinzer humor that seems to have become a national punchline after the NFL Draft and with the rise of “The Pat McAfee Show.” He doesn’t lean into lazy Pittsburgh stereotypes.
“It can’t just be crossing words off a list: Pierogies. Parking chairs,” Wissel said. “I hate to be one of those people who polices out-of-towners, but sometimes you read things on Twitter or Reddit and see people trying to reduce Pittsburgh to a handful of clichés. They’re trying to turn a city into a vocabulary word, when it’s so much more than that.”
When NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell stiffly trotted out a “Yinz ready?” during the draft in Pittsburgh, Wissel cringed along with many of us.
His humor is much more about shared local experience. In the Fern Hollow video, he jokes about the bar owner whose car appears to permanently occupy a parking spot on busy Penn Avenue outside his Evergreen Cafe in Point Breeze.
“I don’t know who that dude has pictures of, but he should be in jail,” he says on the video.
In his new role, the show wraps up each day at 10 a.m., but the work is far from over.
He constantly sifts through news, tracking local happenings and keeping tabs on the conversations unfolding online in search of material.
“You’ve got to be paying attention,” he said. “You’ve got to be online and aware of what’s going on.”
There’s plenty more comedy on the way. One upcoming riff on WDVE imagines what happens when Pittsburghers invade France for the Steelers game in Paris this fall.
The whirlwind way his new life came together left Wissel with a comedic twist on a parting piece of advice:
“Give up on your dreams, kids, because they always come calling back.”
Fourteen years after deciding the morning-show seat would never open, Wissel finds himself sitting in it.