'The Cordes Awards' - A Tribute to Central Minnesotans

THANKFUL

I’ve been reflecting for some time about the amazing people I’ve had the opportunity to meet, chat with, and become friends with over the years through ‘It Matters with Kelly Cordes' on WJON.

It has now been over 10 years that ‘It Matters’ has been on the air, and I can still remember the day that my boss David called me into his office and asked me if I would be interested in doing a talk show. I was so excited. I wanted to be the Oprah Winfrey of central Minnesota. I wanted to bring valuable information to area people of all ages, and thus, ‘It Matters’ was born.

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Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash

AMAZING PEOPLE

That being said, it takes a lot to put together an interesting talk show format when you work in a smaller market. You are the producer, the scheduler, the person who has to think of ideas and find interesting topics and people, and lucky for me, Jay Caldwell & Pete Nyblom showed me how to format the show and then gave me the freedom to create a program.

COMMUNITY PARTNERS

Since then, I’ve often though about the community partners that I’ve made by being gifted the opportunity to create this program. Many of those people have been with me since the show first started; linking me with people in our community; helping me come up with topics and ideas that central Minnesotans want to learn about.

THE CORDES AWARDS

So this year, to honor those people, we have created “The Cordes Awards.” Over the next few months, I’ll be featuring a special person or people that have been helping me through all these years to find guests and create interesting, important, and sometimes just flat-out fun!

We’ve had amazing authors, musicians, car care tips, gardening tips, and even information coming straight from our Minnesota Capitol. Whether it is movies and streaming reviews, recovery from addiction, health and aging information, so many guests and people have made our program possible.

At the end of the week, we’ll meet our first recipients of The Cordes Awards, and I hope you will join me when you see these folks out and about and thank them for their generous contribution of time to providing great information to our central Minnesota audience.