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His first big on-air job was at WLW-I TV. He was their weatherman. He predicted hail the "size of canned hams." On a lark, he erased the borders between the states. He predicted blizzards in cities with names he made up. Guess what? His irreverent style attracted a huge chuckling and snorting audience.

It still does. David Michael Letterman, the son of an Indiana florist, is consistently voted the second most popular personality on television right behind Oprah Winfrey. Letterman delivered his first monologue in a hospital maternity ward on April 12, 1947. (It probably lacked some of the acerbic wit he's famous for and sounded a lot more like a baby crying.)

He earned a telecommunications diploma and, after a brief stint as a kiddie show performer, a late night movie host, and a weatherman in Indiana he packed up his college sweetheart wife and went to California.

Letterman wound up writing material for the Jimmy Walker sitcom "Good Times." He hosted daytime game shows and even landed a recurring role on a Mary Tyler Moore sitcom.

But Letterman's biggest break came as a stand-up comic. It was that comedy that landed him on the Tonight Show. That's where he met the man he would later call his mentor, Johnny Carson.

Carson loved the young comic. Over the years Letterman guest hosted the show and made 50 appearances. Carson and Letterman forged a friendship that continued until Carson's death in 2005.

Letterman hosted a short lived daytime talk show and was rewarded with two Emmy's and an audience so small that it was canceled after just a few months.

Letterman moved to Late Nights in 1982 and has never looked back. Letterman switched networks after a public battle with Jay Leno over who would be the new host of the Tonight Show.

Along the way he's made celebrities cry, he's dropped hundreds of objects off of the roof of the studio, he's attempted to fry eggs on summertime New York sidewalks and much, much more.

Letterman made television history after the 9/11 terrorist attack on New York City by holding hands with broadcaster Dan Rather and delivering a passionate monologue short on jokes but in perfect accord with the mood of a shocked and angry nation.

He's intensely personal and is reputed to be very choosy about what he reveals about his personal life to the public. He's said he is an avid Internet surfer and has frequently described himself as a fanatic "short wave radio listener."

That's it.

Ultimately, just who David Michael Letterman really is will have to remain a gap-toothed mystery.

For now.

Learn more about this author, L. Talbot.
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