Michael Garofalo (MG): It’s October 23, 2003. In New York City’s iconic Grand Central Terminal a small crowd has gathered around this 8 by 10 foot glowing box.

Dave Isay (DI): Welcome to the launch of StoryCorps. I’m Dave Isay and I’m the founder of the project.  

Jasmyn Morris (JM): Documentary producer Dave Isay and a small staff of enthusiastic 20-somethings have somehow managed to get a recording booth built inside one of the busiest train stations in the world. 

MG: And for opening day…they got legendary oral historian, Studs Terkel, to cut the ribbon…

Studs Terkel (ST): This is a very exhilarating moment, it’s one of celebration. I should point out that I’m deaf as a post; I haven’t heard a word that was said. (crowd laughter) The reason I am here this morning is that we’re about to celebrate…this is the first day…we shall begin celebrating the lives of the uncelebrated. 

We’re at Grand Central Station now. We know there’s an architect but who hung the iron? Who were the brickmasons? Who swept the floors? Who kept the trains going? These are the non-celebrated people of our country.   

We have here behind us a kiosk in which those anonymous people, the non celebrated, will speak of their lives. It might be a grandmother speaking to a grandchild. It might be a kid talking to his uncle. It might be a neighbor talking to a neighbor. And suddenly they will realize their lives have a meaning. Thank you.

[crowd applauds]

DI: Studs came here from Chicago. He’s 91, and we hope that you’re with us for another 91 years, Studs. But no matter what, you have our word that your spirit, and your vision and heart will live on in StoryCorps. 

I’m gonna ask you if you would cut the ribbon for us. And I’ll just go over and tell him that. (crowd laughter) (Off mic: will you cut the ribbon for us now ?)

ST: Cut this here? Is this it?

DI: Go for it. 

[Snipping noise]

ST: Bang!

DI: And with that, StoryCorps is born. Thank you all for coming. Thank you. [crowd applauds]

MG: 20 years later… what started as a kind of crazy idea has improbably grown into an American institution… StoryCorps has now recorded in all 50 states… 

JM: Nearly 700,000 people have sat down to record a conversation…

MG: And they’re all preserved at the Library of Congress. We did the math… and it would take you more than 10 years to listen to everything in our archive.

JM: In this special series marking our 20th anniversary, we’ll be celebrating the story of StoryCorps… what it took to get here… and the incredible people we’ve heard from over the past two decades.

MG: Because this isn’t just about where StoryCorps is 20 years later… we’ll be catching up with some of the participants we’ve featured on air and on the podcast over the years to find out where they are now. I’m Michael Garofalo.

JM: And I’m Jasmyn Morris.

MG: And we’ve been lucky enough to have been on this ride for most of StoryCorps’ history…

JM: So we’ll be your guides… to StoryCorps Then and Now… here on the StoryCorps podcast from NPR.

[MUSIC POST and OUT]

MG: So going back to 2003… the booth opens… and no one had any idea what we’d end up hearing in these interviews… that is, if anyone even showed up.

JM: But that fall the stories did start coming…

 

Ed Trinka: My father told me years ago, he said be such a man and live such a life that, if everybody lived a life like yours, this would be God’s paradise, and I go by that.

Kaitlyn Sever (KS): Do you wanna ask me anything else?

Lynne Lande (LL): Do you love me?

KS: Oh stop it. Of course I love you.

LL: There you go.

KS & LL: (Laughter)

Phillip Frabosilo (PF): I really think we’re a perfect blend. In fact, as a couple we add up more than the sum of the whole. 

Judy Frabosilo (KF): Honey, that’s beautiful. Thank you.

PF: You’re welcome. (laughter)

Monica Estaban: What is the most important thing you have learned in life?

Harold Slappy: The most important thing I’ve learned in life is: the foundation of all happiness is love. L-O-V-E. Love and respect for your fellow man, because if you have no love in your life, you’re not living…you’re not living. 

MG: Some people even came back again and again… like Louisa Stephens… Here she’s being interviewed by one of our facilitators…

Kayvon Bahramian (KB): You’ve been here how many times now?

Louisa Stephens (LS): I think maybe 22.

KB: 22 times…

LS: And I’ll tell you, I love it. I exercise restraint and discipline in not coming down here every couple days. 

KB: What’s the experience like?

LS: A lot of it has to do with being inside the booth itself. First, coming down to Grand Central and there’s all this chaos and a huge amount of noise. And then you come to the booth and the door shuts and it’s just so quiet. And when it’s quiet like that, it feels like something in your brain is opening, like those big doors in bank vaults that are so thick. That you’ve had that closed, kind of, as a protection against all the noise and the chaos of life. And you come into this booth and those just gradually, in your brain, open up. So you feel as if you can expose parts of you that were too fragile to expose to the noisy world. And you’re engaging each other in a way that you just can’t really do in ordinary life. 

JM: What Louisa is describing here – this is really what Dave was envisioning when he came up with the idea of StoryCorps. Even though he was a radio producer, Dave actually didn’t think there’d be any radio that came out of the booth. 

MG: Right, it was all about giving people the chance to do these interviews. There was no thought of a weekly broadcast on NPR… or animations… books… this podcast… But pretty quickly, it became clear that something special was happening. Something worth sharing.

JM: Let’s listen to the very first story we ever aired on NPR… along with an update from the participants.

 

Debora Brackarz (DB): My name is Debora Brakarz, I’m 26 years old.

 

Mike Wolmetz (MW): My name is Michael Edward Wolmetz but call me Mike. I’m 25 

years old.

 

DB: And we’re at the StoryCorps interview booth in Grand Central Terminal, New York City.

 

MG: Mike and Debora sat down to record in January 2004. At the time, they had only been dating for 3 months.

 

DB: So, what was the most emotionally painful thing that ever happened? 

 

MW: Uh, thinking about it takes my breath away, but, uh, my father passing  away, of course, just over two years ago. And he was the closest person to me. It was sudden and he was supposed to pick me up from the airport in New York. And I got to the airport and I called my house and my mother said, ‘Um, you know, your aunt’s gonna pick you up.’

 

Obviously I could detect something in her voice. There’s no way that you could hide that. And I was like, ‘Tell me what it is.’ My mother said, ‘I don’t wanna tell you like this. And I was like, ‘Tell me. You have to tell me. Tell me.’ And, she told me that he died in the middle of the night.

 

I stood there and watched the bags go around the carousel and I waited for my bag and I went outside and I got in my aunt’s car. And, uh, I felt like no other time in my life. 

 

So this is the ring that my father gave to my mother, and we can leave it there. Um, and he saved up and he purchased this and he proposed to my mother with this. And so I thought that I would give it to you. So that he could be with us for this also. Um, so, I’m gonna share a mic with you right now Debora. Where’s the right finger? Debora, will you please marry me? 

 

DB: Yeah, of course. I love you. 

 

MW: So kids, this is how your mother and I got married. In a booth in Grand Central Station, uh, with my father’s ring. My grandfather was a cab driver for 40 years. Used to pick people up here every day, so it seems right.

 

DB: I wanted to know if there’s… a vision for the future about… let’s say 20 years.

 

MW: 20 years? That’s a long time. Okay…

 

DB: How old will you be in 20?

 

MW: In 20 years I’ll be 45 years old. Um, there’s a Portuguese phrase…

 

DB: Cada vez que você faz um plano, Deus ri.

 

MW: Every time you make a plan, God laughs.

 

DB: Yeah.

 

MW: I believe that. So I have no idea what I’ll be doing. But I know I’ll be with you.

 

2023 INTERVIEW:

 

MW: My name is Mike Wolmetz. I’m here with my wife, Debora Brakarz.

 

DB: It’s been almost 20 years. We’re still together and we have two kids, Iago who’s 14 and Luca, who’s 11.

 

MW: You know, we went through a lot of tissues during our first interview…

 

DB: [Laughs] I don’t say a lot but I cry a lot. 

 

MW: You know, I also cried during it. It really brought back memories of the earliest days of a relationship. Also just how much we spoke to, like, our future children. How, uh, presumptuous was that? Like I don’t think before saying those words had I even thought about the idea of having children. I was 24 years old. 

 

DB: We were young and in love. 

 

MW: Yes, I definitely was that, but I was not young and in love with children. 

 

DB: [Laughs]

 

MW: I just want to say that it was, uh, not at all the intention when we did this to have our proposal broadcast. The intention was to have it recorded for our own posterity. 

 

DB: Do you remember what we did right after we came out of the interview?

 

MW: We got on the train. I mean, the whole idea was we did this in a train station, so how could we not just get on a train. And I think we went to a bed-and-breakfast somewhere, maybe just outside the city. 

 

DB: Yeah. You wanted to celebrate and you knew that I liked history, so you found this little historic B & B and…. 

 

MW: You had told me how you are part of a history club and I only learned later that it wasn’t a real history club. It was a Lord of the Rings fan club. 

 

DB: I didn’t want you to think that I was a geek or something, so I just fudged that it was medieval history instead of Lord of the Rings.   

 

MW: And this is a lesson. Sometimes you don’t know everything about your partner, uh, when you get engaged, especially if it’s after three months. 

 

What do you hope our kids, or, our grandkids, take away from listening to these recordings?

 

DB: So I hope they will learn who we were back then as a young couple in love, with all these hopes and dreams and no responsibilities…

 

2004 INTERVIEW:

 

MW: You’re a much better singer than me so please help me out as much as you can…

 

MW & DB: [Sing] Love me tender love me sweet, never let me go. 

 

2023 INTERVIEW:

 

DB: … and then, in this interview, they will meet us as an established couple who went through all the growing pains of getting to know each other. Who learned about each other and ourselves, and had problems in life but were very fortunate to be able to overcome them. 

 

2004 INTERVIEW:

 

MW & DB: [Sing] For my darling –

 

MW: [Sings] Debora I love you… and I always will.

 

JM: That was husband and wife Mike Wolmetz and Debora Brakarz. They tried to play their recording for their tweens… but the kids thought it was boring. We might have to wait another 20 years for that update.

MG: So, StoryCorps is on its way… From the outside, things look great. But behind the scenes… things were maybe a little messy.

David Reville (DR): And it was agony. Every deadline that Dave set in the first nine months of the project failed to be accomplished.=

 

MG: That’s after the break. Stay with us.

<BREAK>

JM: Welcome back. So, StoryCorps is up and running in Grand Central. But that first year was a little touch and go. And Michael was around for that.

MG: I was. It seemed like every couple weeks we were scrambling to find ways to get people into the booth… I mean the worst thing that could happen, right, is that the booth would be empty… and that no one would come to do interviews…

But Dave had a fix for that… I remember he’d literally run over to New York’s public radio station and plead for the audience to come in…

Brian Lehrer (BL): Brian Lehrer on WNYC. David Isay is back with us with some more excerpts from the StoryCorps oral history booth that he founded last fall in Grand Central Terminal. As David Isay strolls into the studio, takes a seat, puts on his headphones and I say, welcome back to WNYC, Dave. 

Dave Isay (DI): Brian, great to be here. Thank you.

BL: If you only knew out there how he did not hear any of that introduction and was chugging his way from the elevator through security.

DI: We took a little jog.

BL: What kind of tape do you have today?

DI: We have a lot of tape for you.

JM: So the Brian Lehrer show is legendary in New York City… it’s a live weekday call in show… hugely popular with New Yorkers from all walks of life… the perfect place for Dave to make his pitch.

DI: Now we have some appointments open for next week, and actually for this week. Call now. Bring your mom. Bring your grandmother. Bring anybody you want.

While we’re still solvent, come on in and use the storybooth. I’m just kidding. We’ll be fine… It’s the best bargain in town. Come on and do an oral history. 

BL: More excerpts to come on your next visit. Thanks Dave.

DI: Thanks Brian.

MG: This actually worked. I remember right after Dave would get off the air, appointments would fill up for a couple weeks… and then they’d dip again and Dave would go back on air.

JM: Which is hilarious because now there’s a waitlist to do interviews wherever we go.

MG: Yeah, it’s fun to look back at the scrappy beginnings. In fact we did that this summer when we brought current StoryCorps staff in from all over the country…and they were treated to a conversation between Dave and StoryCorps employee number one – David Reville. 

JM: They were interviewed by former StoryCorps facilitator, current StoryCorps board member and possibly the most beloved Young Adult novelist of our time, Jason Reynolds. 

 Let’s hear a little bit of that conversation now. It was recorded in front of a live audience.

Jason Reynolds (JR): Let’s get started. I think it feels only appropriate for me to start with you, Dave. My question for you is number one, why sound? You clearly have a talent for storytelling, so why do it through sound? And number two, how, in your earlier years, did you learn to make people comfortable being recorded?

Dave Isay (DI): Great question; so why sound? To me, you know, the soul is contained in the human voice. People in the olden days used to listen to the radio in the car. You were driving, and you heard a voice coming through the speaker. There’s such a power to the human voice. And StoryCorps, and you know, even the documentary work I did before that, has always been about proximity. So it’s like whoever it is from a StoryCorps story on Friday, if you’re driving to work, that person is sitting in the passenger seat next to you, whispering their truths into your ear. And again, I can’t think of a more visceral way to tell a story. 

The second question was, how do you make people comfortable? Okay, so when I used to make radio documentaries before starting StoryCorps, I thought that there was something special about me that enabled people to, like, say these incredible things that got turned into radio documentaries. We launched StoryCorps, and on the first day suddenly I realized it had absolutely nothing to do with me. Anybody could, like, has the capacity, if they’re good listeners, just to, you know, ask questions and get beautiful answers out of people. I think it’s just a matter of being genuinely curious about the people who you’re talking to and they feel it and, and magic happens. It happens in the booth. It happened during, you know, when making radio documentaries. But again, all of us are capable of doing that kind of listening. So thanks, Jason.

JR: Now, my next question is for you, David. What’s your version of you and Dave’s story?

DR: Before I met Dave, he was a hero of mine. And I hosted a conference, and I cold called Dave and a lot of other people I thought of as heroes in documentary work. I got him on the phone. We bonded pretty quickly at that conference, but we stayed in touch. 

Six months later, he called me up and said, ‘I have this idea I’m thinking about. Can I come and talk to you about it?’ I went to New York. I think by the end of that conversation, I had determined that if there was any way I could move my six-month-old child and my wife to New York City to work on this idea, I was gonna do it. And he said, ‘Okay, but I don’t have any money.’ (audience laughter) But I relocated to a fifth floor walk up apartment. That’s the beginning. That’s what I remember as the beginning of our relationship. And then everything followed from that. 

JR: Why Grand Central? Why was that the location? 

DR: I wish it wasn’t. (audience laughter) Because Dave thought it should be in the middle of New York City, and there’s nothing more in the middle of New York City than Grand Central Station. And it was agony. Every deadline that Dave set in the first nine months of the project failed to be accomplished. I got there in February and he said, ‘We’re gonna open in June.’ ‘Open what?’ ‘We’re gonna build a booth in the middle of Grand Central Station.’ Have you ever been in Grand Central Terminal? It’s very noisy there. We wanna record stories; create a sacred space where people can have an exchange. You can’t…no. (audience laughter) That was the end. 

JR: Dave, was there a philosophy behind this? Is that true, like, it’s the middle of Manhattan, let’s just put it in Grand Central?

DI: Yeah, no, the Grand Central is like the people’s temple, you know, so I just wanted it to be as visible as possible.

DR: One thing I learned from Dave very early, I could tell a thousand stories, like, about this, but, you know. I would come into the office and say, ‘we have to find another place.’ And he…he would say, ‘you don’t understand the question. The answer to the question I asked you is yes. So we just have to get ‘til you get the question.’ It was him. He wanted it there, and so that’s where it went.

DI: It was, uh, it was really fun launching StoryCorps. It was like, seven of us, 24 hours a day, figuring this thing out. You guys would stay, like, stayed up overnight, nights at a time to build this thing, yeah.

DR: And I’m wearing, actually, a laminated tag that says StoryCorps Grand Central Terminal Assembly Team, October 9th through 18th, 2003. We laminated these at Staples and used them to get us into Grand Central after hours. And people were just like, ‘Oh really, you’re on the StoryCorps Assembly Team?’ Literally, we could walk in with this. (audience laughter)

JR: When did you all know that StoryCorps was actually going to work? 

DR: I was pretty sure it was going to work when I talked to Dave that first day. But you know, we did a series of preliminary interviews and I did sort of callbacks with those interviewers. And I said, you know, ‘How was the experience? We were trying to learn. Is this the right amount of time?’ All kinds of questions. 

And I remember one day I was calling back people that had done interviews over the past couple days, and I talked to one woman and she said, ‘My mother and I have never talked the way we talked in that booth. And I don’t know what kind of magic you did, but we haven’t stopped talking since. We opened up a channel of communication that did not exist and this thing is magical.’  

And then a couple calls later I talked to a woman and she said, ‘Oh my gosh, this was amazing. I talked to my mother about things I have never talked to her about before. Things she would never talk about with anybody. And I don’t know what kind of magic you have in that booth.’ And I thought, you know, if two people can have those experiences and they have the same feeling, which is, we couldn’t have done it otherwise. It’s going to work.

JR: Twenty years later, StoryCorps is still rockin’. It’s still here; it’s changing. It’s an incredible, sort of, force in this country.  Like, does the magnitude ever strike you that you’re a part of the beginning stages of a social institution that’s only going to cement itself more over the next twenty years?

DR: So it’s really fun to talk about legacy, and it’s fun to talk about the past. And, on some level, I think people think about StoryCorps as a project about the past, ‘cause people are recollecting things. But I think it’s about the future. And it’s among the hardest work I’ve ever done. It’s among the things I am proudest of that I was part of. And I was there at the beginning, but really what that afforded me was a front seat to watch the team that we built accomplish something really amazing. And then watch that snowball roll down the hill. 

And StoryCorps for me has always been about the future. It’s about the connection that was made in the booth and how that follows forward; and how sharing those stories and sharing them with your…you know, the people who come after you. It’s a project that, to me, lives in the future, not in the past. So that’s kind of the way I think about it. I hope that answered the question. 

JR: Yeah, yeah. Dave. You’re not off the hook Dave; you too.

DI: Well, I’ll just… You know, one of the things that I think about is that what we’re doing now is so beautiful, but I don’t think we have any idea what it’s going to mean a hundred years from now. And that, just really a beautiful thing to think about. Again, just like at the beginning, we had no idea if it was going to work, like, we just don’t know what this is going to mean. And that’s, like, a fun and exciting place to be at. 

You know, everybody sees something different in StoryCorps. And I think that’s why this little miracle survived. And, you know, here we are.

MG: StoryCorps has survived and thrived… and it’s really because of the people all over the country who were willing to open themselves up on tape over the past twenty years.

JM: And so next time, we’ll pay tribute to some early participants who helped define what StoryCorps could be… 

MG: That’s right – get ready to meet the first ever poet laureate of StoryCorps.

Danny Perasa: Being married is like having a color television set, you never wanna go back to black and white.

JM: This episode was produced by Max Jungreis, and Jud Esty-Kendall. Our technical director is Jarrett Floyd. 

MG: Art for this episode was created by Liz McCarty. Special thanks to Kerrie Hillman, Sarah Kramer, Kayvon Bahramian… Isabella Gonzalez… and Andy Lanset over at the WNYC archives.

 

JM: Head over to StoryCorps – dot – org… to find out how to record your own StoryCorps conversation… you can go to one of our storybooths, use our app, or record remotely… 

 

MG: It is still the best deal in town. I’m Michael Garofalo…

 

JM: And I’m Jasmyn Morris. 

 

MG: We’ll be back next week. Thanks for listening.