Wendy Williams

On her 50th birthday, the council of Asbury Park, New Jersey, renamed the street on which she grew up Wendy Williams Way.

Wendy Williams Hunter (Wendy Joan Williams; born July 18, 1964) is an American former broadcaster, media personality, and writer.

Wendy Joan Williams was born on July 18, 1964, in Asbury Park, New Jersey.

She is the second of three children born to Shirley (Skinner) and Thomas Dwayne Williams.

The couple had a combined three master's degrees; Shirley was a special education teacher while Thomas was a teacher and school principal who in 1969 became the first black school administrator in Red Bank, New Jersey.

Following race riots in Asbury Park in 1970, the family moved to the predominantly white, upper middle class suburb of Wayside in Ocean Township, New Jersey.

They attended a Baptist church and visited the town of Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts, each summer.

As a child, doctors recommended Williams be medicated to control her hyperactivity.

She suffered from poor body image due to the diet her parents put her on after gaining weight in elementary school.

Williams was a Brownie in the Girl Scouts and volunteered as a candy striper.

Her parents believed she would become a nurse.

Williams acted as an announcer at her younger brother's Little League Baseball games.

She graduated from Ocean Township High School in 1982 among four black students, ranking 360th in the class of 363.

Her academic performance contrasted with that of her older sister, who received a university scholarship at the age of 16.

As she was able to use "white" diction instead of African-American Vernacular English, Williams's white classmates considered her one of their own and freely used the word nigger around her.

She did not get along with the other black students and said their only commonality was smoking cannabis.

According to Williams, she did not listen to hip hop music and instead listened to rock bands like AC/DC because they were popular with her classmates.

Due to her suburban upbringing, Williams considers herself "a multicultural woman who happens to be Black".

Williams attended Northeastern University in Boston with the intent of becoming a television anchor.

Less than a month after starting, she switched from television communications to radio because she could advance her career faster —a move of which her parents disapproved.

Williams graduated in 1986 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in communication and, to appease her parents, a minor in journalism.

She was a disc jockey for the college radio station, WRBB, where rapper LL Cool J was her first celebrity interviewee.

As an intern for Matt Siegel at contemporary hit radio station WXKS-FM, Williams recapped the soap operas Dallas and Dynasty on air.

In 2021, Williams revealed that she was date raped while in college.

Two weeks after graduating from Northeastern, Williams began her career as a disc jockey working for the small, calypso and reggae-oriented WVIS in Frederiksted, U.S. Virgin Islands, but disliked the role because she did not learn as much about radio from her colleagues as she expected.

Due to low pay and isolation from her family, Williams began sending resumes and demo tapes of herself to other radio stations.

She left WVIS after eight months and obtained a position at Washington, D.C.'s WOL, but found its oldies radio format incompatible with her personality.

Williams continued sending tapes to other stations and on November 1, 1987, began as a weekend fill-in on New York City's WQHT.

After the urban contemporary station hired her full-time to work overnight shifts, she left WOL.

Williams was fired from WQHT after two years and briefly worked overnight shifts at WPLJ before being hired by WRKS.

Initially working as a fill-in, WRKS gave Williams a non-compete clause and permanent morning position in May 1990 after WBLS began poaching its employees.

She joined Jeff Foxx and Spider Webb as part of the station's "Wake-Up Club".

There, Williams began gossiping about rappers and celebrities during a segment called "Dish the Dirt".

Those she talked about, such as Bill Cosby and Russell Simmons, called the station and (unsuccessfully) demanded she be fired.

As she grew into a popular radio personality, WRKS moved Williams to host the evening drive time slot in April 1991.

She gained notoriety for her on-air spats with celebrities and was the subject of the 2006 VH1 reality television series The Wendy Williams Experience, which broadcast events surrounding her radio show.

Williams's other endeavors include authoring several books, appearances in various films and television shows, touring her comedy show, and her own product lines, including a fashion line, a jewelry collection and a wig line.

From 2008 to 2021, she hosted the nationally syndicated television talk show The Wendy Williams Show.

Prior to television, Williams was a radio DJ and host and quickly became known in New York City as a shock jock.

Williams was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2009.