For the last four decades Mark Madden has embraced his reputation for being a polarizing figure in the Pittsburgh media. Things like his blunt interactions with callers to his bold opinions, has helped Madden find immense success. For many, the name Mark Madden doesn’t correlate with a sheepish personality, but that wasn’t always the case.

Madden graduated from Shaler Area in 1978, long before his candid and confrontational on-air personna developed.

“When I went to Shaler, I was really quiet. I was the kid that never said anything. I was totally unnoticeable,” Madden said.

Madden attended high school at the Mt. Royal building in one of the last graduating classes before the current high school building opened. There was not enough room for the entire student body so students came in at different times.

“We went in shifts. The juniors and seniors went from 7 til noon. The sophomores went from noon til 5. It sounds crazy, right? The classes were only 32 minutes long. I gotta be blunt, for me, it wasn’t much of a high school experience. There was no time to appreciate any moments, you know? I had a good experience here. It just was a different experience because of the circumstances.”

One of those good experiences helped set him on his career path in the media. During Madden’s junior year of high school, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette founded the suburban editions of their newspaper: PG North, PG South, PG East and PG West.

“The Post-Gazette was so desperate for people to turn in content that in the North they got somebody from the school newspaper at each school to write for them. There were three of us that survived and worked there as part timers for quite a while: me, a kid from Hampton and a kid from Butler. So I was really lucky in that regard,” Madden said.

There is some irony in the fact that Madden is most recognized for his work on The Mark Madden Show on WXDX 105.9 or his time as a TV announcer for World Championship Wrestling, but he still prefers to write, which he currently does for the Pittsburgh Tribune Review.

“I prefer the written word. I honestly think that’s what I’m best at. I’m no Gene Collier. I think he’s the best sports columnist in Pittsburgh history, but that’s what I’ve always aspired to be,” Madden said.

While he may not have aspired to be a radio personality, that’s what he has become – even if it didn’t seem like it would turn out like that at first.

“I have a tape of my first show, and it’s awful. Not so much the content, but I had a really, high, tinny voice,” Madden said. “A radio veteran named Doug Hoerth said to me, ‘Kid, listen, your voice sounds like expletive. Here’s what you do. You put your headsets on all the time. If you listen to your voice all the time, you’ll realize it’s crap and you’ll modulate it. You’ll bring it down.’ That’s exactly what happened.”

While he worked on his voice, he did not have to work on his style. Madden believes a lot of his popularity comes from a belief in not “pandering to the audience”, which he said has never worked for him.

“I always tell the truth, my perceived truth, about what I see. A lot of people don’t like that. In a time like this where there are so many cheerleaders in the media, I think a big part of my success is being the guy who doesn’t do that,” Madden said.

That approach has not come without any consequences. Madden was fired from a radio job at ESPN 1250  in 2008 after he made a comment that was deemed politically incorrect.

“I got fired for saying something that wasn’t politically correct, which I never apologized for. I just think you say what you say and stand behind it,” Madden said. “But (getting fired) was OK because it got me out of a bad job and into a better job.”

That “better job” is the one he still holds today. Not long after he was fired from ESPN 1250, he was hired by 105.9 The X, an iHeartMedia station to host the still-airing Mark Madden Show.

That show has provided him with some of his favorite memories, which have been linked to one of his favorite sports – “I’m a bigger hockey guy than anything” – and his favorite team that he watched growing up – the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Dee Rizzo, a friend who went into business working for a hockey agency, helped create some of Madden’s memorable stories with Penguin legends like Sidney Crosby and Mario Lemieux.

“When Sid (Crosby) got drafted, Rizzo picked him up at the airport. He was supposed to take (Crosby) right to the Penguins offices, but he brought him into my studio before they went to Penguin offices. So I’ve always had a real good relationship with Sid,” Madden said. But in terms of an event he covered, Madden didn’t hesitate with an answer.

“The Mario Lemieux comeback game in 2000 was really special. I’ll never forget that. Mario had private practices and he let me and Stan Savran in on those. That was amazing,” Madden said.

He was one of the first people to know about the comeback and found a way to put that information to good use for himself.

“Dee Rizzo, my friend who worked with Mario, called me up and said, ‘Hey, Mario is coming back to play. He just wanted to let you know.’ I was on the air when Riz called; we were on commercial so I had about five minutes before I went back on the air to announce it. I called the commissioner of my fantasy hockey league and said, ‘I’d like to claim Mario Lemieux from waivers for my team.’”

His love for the Penguins is started with the one person he seems to place above everyone else: his mother. Madden and his mom were season ticket holders when Mark was young. Madden was an only child who never knew his father and was raised by his mom, grandmother and aunt.

His mom, who passed away in 2006, was a teacher at North Hills High School who taught English and Speech and Debate.

“I was a mamma’s boy to the nth degree. She was dedicated to the art of communication and that rubbed off on me in a big way,” Madden said. “Everything I am, I owe to her. There’s no question about that.”

In 2023, Madden established the Peggy Ann Madden Scholarship to honor his mother’s legacy and support future generations of students at North Hills.

After 40 years in the media business, Madden has seen plenty of change.

“The business has changed a lot. It’s more important to be first than it is to be right, which I don’t think is a good thing, but sometimes things don’t change for the better.”

Love him or hate him, Mark Madden has cemented his legacy in Pittsburgh media by staying unapologetically true to himself and standing up for what he believes in.

“I’ve been doing radio for 30 years. I consider it a rewarding career,” he said. “I like what I’ve done. How many people can say ‘I did what I wanted to do and it turned out pretty good’?”