Howard Stern

Howard Allan Stern (born January 12, 1954) is an American radio host, author, actor, and photographer best known for creating and hosting The Howard Stern Show, a program that debuted in 1983 and became nationally syndicated in 1986, pioneering a format of unfiltered commentary, celebrity interviews, and shock humor that drew millions of listeners while repeatedly clashing with broadcast decency standards. The show's explicit content led to cumulative Federal Communications Commission (FCC) indecency fines exceeding $2.5 million against Stern and his broadcasters by the early 2000s, including a record $495,000 penalty in 2004 that prompted Clear Channel Communications to drop the program from its stations, accelerating Stern's 2006 shift to Sirius Satellite Radio (now SiriusXM) for subscription-based, regulation-free airtime under a five-year, $500 million contract. Stern's career milestones include authoring the New York Times bestsellers Private Parts (1993) and Miss America (1995), which detailed his life and sparked a 1997 biographical film; producing and starring in the Emmy-winning E! series Howard Stern Comes Again; and earning induction into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2012 for transforming talk radio into a high-revenue, personality-driven medium. As of March 2026, Stern continues broadcasting on SiriusXM under a three-year contract extension through the end of 2028 with a more flexible schedule allowing reduced live episodes, maintaining a loyal audience despite criticisms of evolving content styles and health-related absences.

Howard Allan Stern was born on January 12, 1954, in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York, to Ben Stern, a radio engineer who worked at stations including WHOM (later WKTU), and Ray (née Rae Schiffman) Stern, an inhalation therapist and former office clerk who became a homemaker. Stern's parents were Jewish, with ancestry tracing to immigrants from Eastern Europe, including Poland and Austria-Hungary; he was their second child, following an older sister, Ellen.

Stern was born on January 12, 1954, in Jackson Heights, Queens, to Ben Stern, an engineer and radio salesman of Polish-Jewish descent who died in 2022 at age 99, and Ray Stern (née Schiffman), a homemaker and later respiratory therapist of Austrian-Hungarian-Jewish heritage. He has one older sister, Ellen. Stern maintains relationships with his daughters, who have pursued varied paths including acting for Emily, who later became Orthodox Jewish, and nursing for Ashley.