Known as the “Voice of the 500,” Paul Page began his Indiana broadcasting career in 1965 at WAIV radio where he quipped his time at the University of Tulsa came in handy because he could pronounce all the classical composer names.
Born in Evansville, Paul was an “army brat” who attended schools all over the world. He graduated high school in Highland Park, outside Chicago, where doing a high school news show on Waukegan’s WKGS first gave him the broadcasting bug. After time in the Army National Guard, including being a broadcast specialist and instructor at Fort Harrison, WIBC hired him in 1970 as a mobile news reporter.
Best recognized for his motorsports broadcasting, Paul is also a highly versatile journalist. During his 13 years at WIBC, he was a general news reporter and won an award for his coverage of the high profile and dangerous kidnapper Tony Kiritsis, including being in the same building with the perpetrator during his 3-day siege. As a traffic reporter, Paul says he “retired from WIBC at 35-hundred feet” when his news chopper crashed to the Speedway High School football field in December 1977, injuring him badly.
Leaving WIBC, Paul joined WTHR-TV and continued broadcasting for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Radio Network. He was handpicked by Sid Collins to be the “Voice of the 500” in 1977, hosting and calling play-by-plays for a total of more than a dozen years as well as being the radio expert annually. As Al Unser, Jr. said, “You haven’t won the Indy 500 until Paul Page says you did.”
In addition to Indianapolis, Paul worked for both ABC/ESPN and NBC Sports Networks. He was national television host of both the CART and Indy Car World Series, covered NASCAR, Formula One, the NHRA, and hosted play-by-plays for ABC’s Wide World of Sports and NBC SportsWorld. Over his storied career, Paul has traveled the world, covering well-known sporting events as well as more obscure ones like Sumo wrestling in Tokyo and the Rubik’s Cube World Championship in Budapest.
A member of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame, Paul won back-to-back Emmys for his Indy 500 coverage in 1989 and ‘90 and was also host or play-by-play in shows that won more than a dozen other Emmys.
Paul is a fan of all types of flight, despite his own personal crash experience. Regularly traveling internationally to cover sporting events around the globe, he’s taken the Concorde 6 times, has taken a ride in a tactical Black Hawk, flown in the space shuttle full motion simulator at Johnson Flight Center, and took his wife, Sally, along for a landing on the USS Roosevelt in an F/A-18 Hornet supersonic aircraft.
After meeting at Channel 13 in Indianapolis, Paul and Sally Larvick married in 1980. A top anchor and broadcaster in her own right, Paul credits her as the better interviewer. Together they ran Page Productions for 34 years, owning and producing the CART Radio Network as well as contributing to or announcing national sports programming ranging from snowmobiling, weightlifting, the America’s Cup, the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, and auto racing, of course.
They have two children – Brian, an aerospace engineer working for Indy Car/Andretti, and Marlo, a graphic design consultant – and three grandchildren.
