Raechel Donahue
Raechel Donahue is a pioneering figure in rock radio and a longtime California broadcaster. Known for her work with her husband Tom Donahue, she helped shape the early rock scene and carried on a wide-ranging career after his death in 1975. Raechel started as CNN’s first entertainment reporter and briefly was a VJ for the Cable Music Channel. She built a lengthy radio résumé in San Francisco on KSAN and in Los Angeles on KMET, KROQ-FM, and KIIS-FM, and she also appeared on Sirius Satellite Radio in 2006 (Classic Vinyl and Sirius Gold).
Beyond radio, Raechel is an author, journalist, and voiceover artist for film, television, and commercials. She is featured in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Paley Center for Media, which honored her in the exhibition “She Made It: Women Creating Television and Radio.” Raechel and Tom Donahue are central figures in Jim Ladd’s semi-biographical book, Radio Waves: Life and Revolution on the FM Dial.
Today she works as a documentary filmmaker. Her film Airplay appeared in 2007, and she wrote, produced, and directed Drawn to Yellowstone for Wyoming PBS in 2009. Her documentary Heart Mountain: An All American Town about WWII Japanese internment camps has been shown on public television and aired through the Armed Forces Network in many countries. Raechel has written hundreds of travel and food articles for outlets like USA Today, eHow, and AZCentral. Her books include Fabulous After Fifty, The Golden Rules of Modern Romance, The Golden Rules for Polite Society, and The Venetian Duck.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 07:31 (CET).