Naomi Cantrell

About Naomi

I always wanted to work in radio, but I almost turned it down as a career.

I was the little kid who called the local radio station requesting songs. Once, I said I’d like to “order” a song and really didn’t know why the DJ asked if I’d like fries with that… Then I was pretending to be a DJ. I would run two CD players and a stack of mix CD’s and my younger sisters would call in requests. Those were the days…

In high school, I attended a vocational school where I took accounting and competed nationally with accounting both years, but I never got away from radio. I did morning announcements my senior year and a lot of people said I should do radio. The superintended asked my accounting class to make daily, one minute radio ads promoting the school, and I LOVED the project! Looking back, only God knows why he asked an accounting class to do radio ads.

In college, I picked up radio as a minor, just for fun. It was the station I grew up listening to and “ordering” songs from, and I thought it would be good to have some communication knowledge to add to my accounting major. I got stuck and worked at the college radio station all four years, summers included. I had fun and did well, again competing nationally with radio. But it came to mean so much more. It was here, at this Christian radio station, that I began to realize the potential for ministry in local Christian radio. As we encouraged local families and came alongside local ministries, I realized radio is not just fun, it is a huge opportunity to change lives.

But I graduated from college and worked toward a “practical” accounting job. A friend from the college radio station called me a year later and told me about an opening at a radio station three hours away from home, and I said I wasn’t interested. I didn’t want to leave my family and follow an unplanned future in an unfamiliar community. But he bugged me until I sent in a resume, and then they asked for an interview. I took the interview in 2007 and knew I belonged at Joy FM.

I still live in Greenville, OH. I have gotten married to Kevin and have two children, Logan & Savannah. And I still work in radio. In 2015, Joy FM became STAR 88.3, and they graciously offered me a job representing the station . I love what I do! I get to be involved in a ministry that is changing lives every day, that kids can safely sing along to in the backseat, that encourages the hopeless and redeems the lost. I get to serve an awesome community. I am still “stuck” in radio, the career I almost said no to, and I’m still having fun. And paying the bills. Isn’t God amazing?