Rush Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh was an American conservative radio talk-show host whose 30-year career on The Rush Limbaugh Show (1988–2021) produced one of the most-influential bodies of work in late-20th and early-21st-century American conservative talk radio — particularly his role in shaping the conservative talk-radio format that subsequently dominated American AM radio across the 1990s and 2000s. He was born Rush Hudson Limbaugh III on January 12, 1951, in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, into a Missouri political-and-legal family. His father Rush Hudson Limbaugh Jr. was a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot and prominent Cape Girardeau attorney, and his mother Mildred Carolyn Armstrong was a homemaker.

His brief attendance at Southeast Missouri State University (1969–1971; without earning a degree) was followed by his early radio career across multiple Pittsburgh, Kansas City, and Sacramento radio stations across 1971–1988 — initially under the pseudonym Jeff Christie. His 1984 hiring as a Sacramento, California afternoon-drive talk-show host at KFBK launched his early-career conservative talk-radio breakthrough.

His August 1, 1988 launch of the nationally syndicated Rush Limbaugh Show — distributed by Premiere Networks via the EFM Media network — produced his national-radio breakthrough. The show's initial 56-station 1988 syndication grew to over 600 stations by the late 1990s and an estimated 15 million weekly listeners — making it the most-listened-to American radio talk show through the 1990s and 2000s.

His political influence across the 1994 Republican Revolution congressional elections — for which he was named the "majority maker" by Republican congressional leadership — shaped 1990s and 2000s American conservative political discourse. His parallel TV career produced the syndicated Rush Limbaugh: The Television Show (1992–1996), produced by future Fox News chief Roger Ailes. His February 3, 2020 Presidential Medal of Freedom award from President Donald Trump came one day after his February 2, 2020 advanced lung cancer diagnosis announcement on his radio show. He died on February 17, 2021, at age 70, in Palm Beach, Florida, of lung cancer.

His name Rush derives from the Old English place-name meaning "rush plant" or "rushes by water." Rush has been a rare but enduring American boys' name across the 20th century.