Singer Rob Reider had no clue that his career would be heading down a different runway after the Bob Braun Show did a remote telecast from the Dayton Air Show in 1978.
Later that year, Reider attended a Lunken Airport air show with fellow amateur ("ham") radio operators when the organizers needed an announcer for the air show. They asked Reider to do it — and that was the first of more than 320 air shows he’s logged in his second career, from which he’ll retire in November.
“It’s time,” says Reider, 75.
Reider is best known in Greater Cincinnati as a regional Emmy-winning Braun Show cast member from 1970 to 1983 along with singers Nancy James, Gwen Conley, Marian Spelman, Randy Weidner and Colleen Sharp. On the nation’s air show circuit, he’s known as an authoritative and entertaining aviation expert describing the aircraft acrobatics flying overhead.
He’s so well known that when Donald Trump’s White House staff in 2020 needed an announcer for the July 4th “Salute to America” flyover, military leaders said “Get Rob Reider.” So the Loveland area resident described the 30-minute air show for 1,500 on the South Lawn and the worldwide internet audience.
Reider says 17 years on WLWT-TV’s live noon Braun Show was perfect training for calling air shows.
“You have to keep the show going when there are no planes in the air. Being able to ad-lib was what I learned from Bob Braun,” he says. “I attribute no small part of my success to the Bob Braun Show. That’s where I learned to entertain an audience,” says Reider, who was born in York, Pa., and attended high school in Columbus where his mother worked for WBNS-TV.
Reider has been entertaining people for more than five decades. Before graduating from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music in 1973, he toured a year with Fred Waring & His Pennsylvanians as a guitarist and singer. He’s also performed with the Kingston Trio folk group, and co-produced and engineered 10 of Trio’s albums.
He was downsized by WLWT-TV in 1983, when the Braun Show dropped music to become a talk show a year before it was canceled. He worked nine years at Vineyard Community Church overseeing live video productions, the choir and lighting. And he did a couple of acting gigs, including playing a guard in The Shawshank Redemption, which was cast and filmed in Ohio.
At the same time, his volunteering at the annual Dayton Air Show and helping with hot air balloons kindled a passion for flying. When he saw longtime WCPO-TV anchorman Al Schottelkotte ride with the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds in 1979, he wrote them a letter and asked for a ride, too.
“I flew with them in August 1980. And I started taking flying lessons in 1980. I’ve always loved aviation. The bug bit me so hard I had to get a pilot’s license,” he says.
In 2006, with his wife Gaile’s cancer in remission, he quit Vineyard Church to enjoy more time with her and develop his air show announcing and voice-over businesses. He joined the International Council of Air Shows in 1995.
“I left Vineyard Church, and it was the best decision I made in my life. I had 18 months with her,” he says.
Then life got tough. Brother Brent Reider, former WGUC-FM chief engineer, died in 2006. Gaile died in 2007. Their daughter, singer Katie Reider, who had songs played on TV’s Dawson’s Creek teen drama, died of rare cancer at age 30 in 2008.
Since 2006, his air show business has taken off, averaging about 20 shows a year. He’s only doing 13 shows this year. He’ll have eight remaining after working the Terre Haute Air Show this weekend with the U.S. Navy Blue Angels; Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt II Demo Team; the “Tora, Tora, Tora” re-enactment of the attack on Pearl Harbor; Franklin’s Flying Circus; Nathan Hammond’s Ghostwriter; the Patriot Parachute Team; a 1943 Twin Beech, P-51 Mustangs and other vintage warbirds.
He often flies to the air shows with his wife Jill Jenkins Reider, the former Cintas Center conference and banquet center manager whom he married in 2012.
Reider hasn’t done much music recently, but he’ll be in Arizona in August for the final American Folk Music Gathering in Scottsdale. He’ll play guitar and sing back-up at the event which started as the Kingston Trio Fantasy Camp.
As his air show work comes in for a soft landing, Reider hopes to continue his voice-over work for films, and recording audio books in his basement studio. He also does pilot training films and voice work for aviation technical and equipment updates. (Rehearsing to read technical Federal Aviation Administration regulations taught him to emphasize the right phrases.)
Reider’s last air show will be in November for the end-of-season Blue Angels homecoming with the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds as special guests.
“It’s never happened before because the Thunderbirds’ homecoming was always the same weekend as the Blue Angels’ homecoming. So I’m going to finish my career with my two favorite teams. I couldn’t be happier,” he says.
While studying at UC, or performing with Fred Waring or the Kingston Trio, he never dreamed how his career could take flight. Does that surprise him?
“It’s surprising to me that my first appearance for money was September of 1970 on the Bob Braun Show. That’s over 50 years ago! And it’s still a huge part of my life.”
