DAN BELL KNOWS WHERE THE GOOD SIGNALS ARE

by CP Byrd

Before Dan Bell ever worked in radio, he was already listening for it.

As a boy in Plano, he slept with a transistor radio under his pillow and drained the battery nearly every night, pulling in whatever signals the dark would give him—Dallas, Chicago, Oklahoma City, New Orleans, Del Rio. If it could reach him, he wanted to hear it.

“I was a radio junkie,” he says.

That habit became something much more. After graduating from Plano High School, Dan served in the Army’s 82nd Airborne and later worked in public affairs at Brooke Army Medical Center while attending San Antonio College part-time. But radio was the goal from the beginning, and over time it became a 42-year long career.

He started on-air as a disc jockey in the 1970s, working in Waco, San Antonio and Dallas. At KVIL, where he spent 13 years, he eventually moved from on-air work into sales…for a particular reason:

“Most people that are on-air are asking, ‘Why are all the salespeople driving such nice cars?’”

So, Dan went on to work with KPLX and KLIF in Dallas, later spent nearly five years helping build SMU’s radio network, and in 2023 was inducted into the Texas Radio Hall of Fame.

For many people, that would be plenty enough story. Dan, however, has a few more stations to explore on the dial.

He is also the voice of two Texas Instruments products many readers may remember from the 1980s— Speak & Read and Speak & Math. The audition started with a word list. Then came more words, some phrases and, finally, a contract.

When Dan asked why they chose him, the answer was not glamour. It was science.

“They found that with my voice, they could fit 25% more words on a computer chip …something about the resonance,” he says. “That’s how I got the gig.”

The work took him to Lubbock, where he recorded lines in a converted meat locker. Product engineers, a linguist, and a speech pathologist listened closely, sometimes sending him back in because his “Plano accent” had slipped through.

The result was a voice heard in every English-speaking country where the toys were sold. His daughter’s friends knew it, too. During school carpools, they would ask him for a line from Speak & Math.

“Number Stompers, Level 1,” he’d say.

Music was also always part of his current. Dan sang in church, school choirs, a rock band, and a barbershop chorus. He performed with a quartet that took him around the country, and his taste still leans toward harmony.

In 2003, Dan was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic prostate cancer, a diagnosis that changed the rhythm of his life but did not quiet it. He participated in a clinical trial at MD Anderson for eight years and still credits the resulting medication with helping to keep him here and moving forward.

After years living in a large house, Dan moved back to Plano and into a 55-plus community. It turned out to be a good next chapter, after the passing of his beloved wife. There he met Brad Scott (see our last issue!), who became a friend, concert companion, casino buddy, and travel pal.

Their first big adventure was a trip to see the Eagles at the Sphere in Las Vegas. From there came another—the Rocky Mountaineer with Celebration Travel.

Dan loved it enough to sign up for more.

Next year, he’s planning for Lake Tahoe, along with a 17-day trip combining the Cotswolds, Brussels, Amsterdam, Norway, Iceland and Reykjavik. The itinerary is ambitious, but Dan seems to like it that way. After a lifetime spent following signals, songs, highways and harmonies, he still has places he wants to go.

For Dan, travel now is not about checking boxes. It is about saying yes while the opportunity is in front of you—yes to the concert, the train ride, the new friend, the view you have not seen yet.

Ask Dan how he has managed so much, and his answer is both sincere and perfectly him. Prayers, a positive attitude and, as he told his oncologist, one more essential ingredient…

“I sip good bourbon every night.”

Some lives are measured in milestones. Dan Bell’s seems better measured in signals— voices carried over the air, harmonies held in tune, laughter between friends and the steady reminder that the world still has music in it, if you know where to listen.