Mindy Ratner is retiring after 43 years as a classical host and producer at MPR

In the 43 years since she arrived at YourClassical Minnesota Public Radio, host/producer Mindy Ratner has made the job her own, reaching beyond the microphone to put her inimitable stamp on what the listeners hear.

“I just followed my own path, creating content that nobody else was creating,” she said in a recent in-depth conversation with her colleague Bonnie North. “I love producing national specials; I just love it.”

Listeners have loved it, too. For years, they’ve tuned in to hear Candles Burning Brightly, the music-and-story program for Chanukah that Ratner has produced numerous times over the years, including one for this year.

Other programs with Jewish content include the Gabriel-Award-winning Kaddish: Reflections on the Holocaust in Music and Words and Music for the Days of Awe for the High Holidays. Another special project tied to Ratner’s years in China was Spring Moon — A Musical Celebration of the Lunar New Year.

After more than 55 years of broadcasting, Ratner is retiring from regular on-air hosting duty on Classical 24, MPR’s national service, on Saturday, Oct. 31. She retires with the most years of service of any woman in MPR’s nearly 60-year history. “For me, it’s a point of pride,” she said. It’s a legendary career that started out rather fittingly for a host who has been called the “Voice of Christmas Day” for her constant holiday presence.

“I got into radio in, I’ll just say, a backwards sort of way,” she said. “I was living in a dormitory on [the University of Wisconsin-Madison] campus, and all the girls in my dorm wanted to go Christmas caroling.” The singers ended up at the student-run radio station that usually played classical music during evening study time. This night was different.

“There was some kid down there spinning rock records. He set up a microphone for us, so we gathered ’round and sang. Keep in mind, Christmas carols are not my repertoire! But you know, I’m an alto. I can harmonize anything.”

An irate station manager burst onto the scene, “but we wound up in conversation, and he said he needed somebody to host classical music on Wednesday nights,” Ratner said. “Well, I knew something about classical music, so he handed me a list of terms and titles and composers’ names and so on.” She passed the impromptu test and found out her radio career would begin in earnest in January of 1968.

“The postscript to that, when I really, really fell in love with radio was the following night, because I did go down and I watched another kid run a show just before kids were going home for Christmas break,” she said. “No classical — it was all rock, taking requests.

“I stayed up all night at the radio station, helping out, and I just fell right into it, hopelessly in love, and this love affair continues to this very moment.”

A stint at Wisconsin Public Radio and stations in Cincinnati and Philadelphia followed before she landed at Classical MPR in 1983, and became only the second woman to host classical music. Since then, Ratner has served as host and producer on MPR’s Classical Music Service and the aforementioned seasonal specials. She was also one of the original voices on Classical 24 at its launch 30 years ago.

“When I first came to Minnesota Public Radio, I was dazzled by the innovation that was going on in this place,” Ratner said. She mentioned programs that no longer exist, such as the music-and-conversation series St. Paul Sunday, and Live from Landmark.

“Oh, it was fabulous!” she said. “I had never done anything like this before. The person who hired me, Marilyn Heltzer, had this brilliant knack of intuiting the best things about the people who worked for her. And she gave me and others opportunities the likes of which I never had.

“So there I was, hosting my first live music program, [Live from Landmark].” Ratner would make her mark on many subsequent programs, such as producing the “Artists in Concert” series. "I really got to develop some chops in those years, and it was fantastic,” she said. “I loved it, I loved it, I loved it.”

In Ratner’s lengthy tenure, she has seen all those programs come and go, as well as a change in the approach to the microphone.

“When I started, we were very formal in our presentation,” she said. “Almost as if I were wearing a ball gown. You wanted to sound intelligent and dressed up. And now I think we are intelligent and companionable and dressed down a little bit, which feels really good.”

And it’s not just presentation; the very definition of “classical music” has morphed as well.

“We’ve become much more open-minded about programming, so that classical music, this term, this genre, offers a home to other things that might otherwise be dancing around the margins,” Ratner said. “Take, for instance, film music — that would be a great example of how that shows up in programming, or music from cultures that are not white European. Music by Latin-American composers, music from China, which is a special thing for me.”

Indeed, American listeners aren’t the only ones to benefit from Ratner’s expertise and love of classical music. From April 1998 to November 1999 she embarked on her “Great Life Adventure, in capital letters,” working for the English Service of China Radio International in Beijing. In 1997, Li Ping, a CRI director, toured Minnesota Public Radio and was introduced to Ratner. Their chat was interrupted by an on-air technical problem that required her immediate attention.

“Basically, I saved the broadcast, and [Li Ping] looked me right in the eye and said, ‘You know, it would be lovely if you’d come and work for us.’ I could hardly stop laughing, which I realized was very impolite.

“I’d never heard of anything so crazy,” Ratner said. “Go to China and be on the radio. Are you kidding me?” But she realized she needed a break, and took the plunge. “It was indescribable, and it was exactly at the right time. It was a long time ago, and yet it is so fresh and lives within, and the people who were my friends in China then are my friends still. And that is one of the greatest gifts I have ever gotten.”

She shared with her Chinese audience what she called “music from home,” performances by Minnesota artists and composers, and when she returned to that home she carried China with her. “I brought back from China CDs, good ones, of a very good orchestra,” Ratner said. “And this was the first time, as far as I know, that we had Chinese music on the radio.”

Her listeners appreciated the expanded playlist she introduced, but mostly, they were happy to have her back at MPR. "When I meet people for the first time, they say two things,” she said in a 2013 interview. “They say, ‘It wouldn't be Christmas without you,’ and they say, ‘I'm glad you came back from China!’"

The relationship with those listeners — fans, really — is crucial to Ratner. “For me, doing radio is a live experience,” she told North. “I have the experience of listening along with you, or Joanne in Vermont, or Cindy in Cincinnati, or Charlotte in Duluth, Georgia. Tom in Toledo. These are real people who have contacted me over the years.

“We’re listening together, and I really feel like that makes a difference in the way I get to relate to the music, and consequently, how I get to relate to whoever’s on the receiving end.”

For about five or six years, Ratner directed the MPR Chamber Choir, and her conducting debut came at the Fitzgerald Theater in downtown St. Paul at an MPR holiday cabaret. The music was by her exact contemporary, Stephen Paulus, whom she very much admired. Another exciting moment in Ratner’s tenure leading the choir came in 2017, when the company celebrated its 50th anniversary. Local singer-songwriter jeremy messersmith wrote an original song “Little Blue World,” which was recorded at MPR’s Maud Moon Weyerhaeuser studio with an all-star band and vocalists, including Ratner. For MPR’s 50th Anniversary Block Party later in the year, she assembled the choir to perform the song again with messersmith in downtown St. Paul. “This will be SO much fun (again)!!!” she wrote at the time … and it was.

Ratner will be taking time at long last to pursue her varied interests, but she’ll still be relating to listeners as an on-call host from time to time.

“I think that each of us, when we sit in front of the microphone, we’re doing a number of things all at once,” she said. “We are a guide. We are an entertainer. We are a teacher. We are a companion.

“A companion. This is really important, and that gets back to that sense of intimacy that we want. This is a very intimate undertaking, even though I can’t see you and you can’t see me. We still have this bond.

“So, you know, it’s the music that brings us together, and it is our responsibility to serve the music, to dish it up in the most engaging and intelligent and respectful way, and I don’t think that changes.”

Send Mindy Ratner a message: Congratulate her on her retirement here.

Great moments online

Mindy has made many online-only contributions for listeners, including:

• Mindy Ratner, Classical MPR's voice of Christmas Day for 30 years: Find out why she says, “I've always worked Christmas."

• 8 songs for 8 nights: Music for Hanukkah: Mindy joins with former music director Ryan Lohr to curate musical selections for the Jewish Festival of Lights.

• Mindy Ratner spends the day at Pere Lachaise: She recounts in 2011 how she spent “the better part of a day” in Paris’ famous cemetery, the final resting place of many musical luminaries.

• On the Classical MPR stage: MPR Choir: How did Mindy end up leading a choir at the Minnesota State Fair? "I couldn't say no!" she says in this 2014 article.

Mindy Ratner: 43 years in photos

Mindy Ratner: 43 years in photos

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