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COURTESY NBCUNIVERSAL MEDIA (4) a baby girl, London Rose Daly — were parents of a 1-year-old boy, Jackson. "I was feeling all those 30-something fears of, 'Holy [crap], what am I going to do?' Luckily it didn't work out," Daly says. "Luckily for me." In the end, of course, O'Brien hitched his big red wagon to TBS in April 2010, a l low ing Da ly to re- main at NBC. I ask: Did you ever write O'Brien a thank- you note? "I should. I should thank him," he says. "I don't think anyone ever thought he was going to accept that one, but it worked out for that mo- ment in time. Sure enough, I got lucky." At almost that exact same moment, he was o ered the morning-show- host gig at KAMP-FM, which is in the same dark, aging building that houses the legend- ary KROQ, the very station where Daly got his big break in 1996 working the night shift. For Daly, apparently, all roads lead to Venice Boulevard. In t he m id-1990s, K ROQ h ig her-ups pegged him as the station's next star, "some- one who could be at KROQ for 20 years," as CBS senior vice president of programming Kevin Weatherly told the Los Angeles Times in Januar y 2010. It was Weatherly who'd given Daly his fi rst big break, bringing him to Los A ngeles follow ing a graveyard shift at Live 105 in San Francisco and then an afternoon-drive shift at KOME, KROQ's alternative- rock sister station in the Bay A rea. He'd proved himself worthy of The Big Break. Daly, famously, got into the radio business thanks to an ambitious young comer o u t o f N e w Yor k n a m e d Jimmy Kimmel, who, in the early '90s, had more or less been banished to Palm Springs during his early sojourn along the pink-slip trail. Daly had his own reason for being in the middle of Nowhere, California: He was attending College of the Desert, reviving his high school dreams of becoming a professional golfer. He and Kim- mel had met before through their families but became friends in the desert: Though it 's often written that Daly was Kimmel's intern, he was more like the sidekick that became the partner. Eventually, both would fi nd their way to KROQ and late-night net- work television. Daly says he went into radio partially by accident. He had no interest in it. His mom, Pattie, had had a solid radio career in his native Santa Monica, California, so he grew up in a culture of radio, but he wasn't one of those kids who fell asleep at night with a transistor tucked beneath his pillow as he dreamed of spinning the hits. For the briefest of moments in the early '90s, he was probably closer to becoming a Catholic priest: He'd enrolled at Loyola Marymount to study the- ology, but he left to pursue a life on the links. However, he downplays all those legends that he was close to getting his collar. This whole entertainment-biz thing hap- pened "only after working with Jimmy and simultaneously recognizing that I was not good enough to make it on the tour," Daly says. "It was like, 'Oh, if you are drug-free and can show up on time in radio, you can ascend the ranks rather quickly,' and I thought this NOW YOU KNOW: Last Call With Carson Daly is in its 13th season on NBC. 2 POTS AMOUNT OF COFFEE CARSON DALY DRINKS IN A TYPICAL DAY LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION! Selfies with Today show co-anchor Natalie Morales (from far left, op- posite page); more selfies with Today show fans on the streets of New York; with Juhi Pathak during The Voice "Battle Rounds"; with Kat Robichaud (left) and Monika Leigh during The Voice "Knockout Rounds" A A .CO M/A M E R I C A NWAY N OV E M B E R 2 01 4 7 1

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