By Katherine Fawcett
As a promoter, salesman and announcer, Wilf Ray knows how to make his smooth voice heard. And for over 60 years, people have listened to what he’s had to say.
The Ray Team: Daughters Robin (left) and Leeann with Wilf Ray. (Photos: Craig Hodge)
In the 1940s, thousands of Vancouverites woke up to Ray, the morning disk jockey on CKMO Radio, as he spun tunes by Bing Crosby and Mel Torme across the airwaves. In the 1950s, potential home-sellers listened to Ray the real estate sales rep as he charmed them with personal details about their astrological signs and the lines on their palms. He quite often sold young couples their first new home. In the 1960s and 1970s, Ray was Jimmy Pattison’s right-hand man, and his words enabled Pattison become one of Canada’s wealthiest entrepreneurs. Today, his steady and strong voice is heard around the world on the Internet as listeners tune in to Ray’s popular gospel music radio show (www.wilfray.com).
“My father is my idol and my hero,” says his daughter Leeann. “He’s always trying to coach us, guide us and teach when he can. He’s a world of information. An ideas man. Throughout his life he’s created so many opportunities; the man’s an open walking book every day.”
Ray was indeed a trailblazer in an era before marketing departments, PR teams or networking. One of his earliest promotional ideas was Disky, a radio station gimmick. Disky was the name Ray gave to a horse and a rider he fashioned out of two 16-inch record albums. Ray affixed Disky to the roof of his 1946 Chevrolet and parked it in downtown Vancouver; the first person to spot Disky and call CKMO station won a box of Purdy’s chocolates.
It was at the radio station that he met Marion, the music librarian. They were smitten, and in typical Wilf Ray style, their wedding was a grand affair. Amid uproar from the clergy, the young couple’s wedding was planned as a promotional event staged at Vancouver’s colossal amusement park, the PNE. It involved a free wedding dress, six bridesmaid gowns, $1 million worth of loaned jewellery and a honeymoon in Mexico. The wedding made the papers again in 2004 when Wilf and Marion celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.
Ray was the morning DJ at CKMO in Vancouver in the 1940s.
Ray’s real estate career began in 1950, as an agent with Coastal Estates in Vancouver. It wasn’t long before he opened his own real estate office. He says that for most Realtors at the time, marketing meant a For Sale sign on the lawn and perhaps a classified ad in the newspaper.
Not for Ray.
He installed an award-winning miniature model home on the roof of his 1949 Austin. He’d drive, often accompanied by Marion – who looked like a Hollywood starlet – down Vancouver’s busiest streets every evening and park the car on Granville Street where crowds of theatre-goers would pass. The eye-catching model home was illuminated from the inside and the words “Wilf Ray Real Estate” flashed along the bottom. He also wrote an inspirational column in the local paper and promoted charity events on his radio program.
It was a time when there were no exams, seminars or formal training for real estate sales reps. “Anybody could be a Realtor. You’d learn on the job. Lawyer. Plumber. As long as you had sales skills, drive and a good personality,” he says.
Those traits translated into other careers as well. As advertising manager at Bowell McLean Auto on Broadway’s Auto Row, Ray erected a 100-foot high Bow-Mac sign – the world’s largest neon sign at the time. Also at the auto dealership, Ray created the world’s largest Checkers Game, using “beautiful women” as checkers and featuring players who chose their moves from a crane perched overhead.
Ray has also used his sales and marketing skills and personal charisma to become an alderman in Maple Ridge, B.C., a professional photographer and highly successful director of corporate communications for Jimmy Pattison’s Neonex International.
After a stress-induced heart attack in 1980, Ray re-examined his life and decided his true talents and passions were for real estate. He re-entered the industry in 1984, and has been active in it ever since. Today, Ray works alongside his daughters Leeann and Robin at Landmark Realty in Mission, near Vancouver; they call themselves The Ray Team.
“It’s a different ball game now,” says Ray of an industry that has changed dramatically since he first entered it. Computers. Virtual tours. Different relationships and commissions structures between Realtors. The ability of the buyer to find out so much more information on their own. Ray says that many of these changes has made things easier for real estate professionals, but some have taken the human interaction factor out of the equation.
Ray checks some of his recent news clippings.
Despite five heart operations, Ray is a handsome, outgoing and spry 83 years old. He’s a great-grandfather, an animal-lover and a health nut. From their beautiful pink-stucco home on a rural street in Mission, Ray devotes most of his time to lovingly caring for his wife Marion, whom he credits for being his constant source of support and inspiration and who was at his side through every endeavour. He’s still responsible for all the marketing and promotions for The Ray Team, and he keeps the Wilf Ray Radio Show rebroadcasts on the web up-to-date and inspirational. He even squeezes in the odd gig as a background actor for movie and television shows.
Ray says that one of the side effects of his heart surgeries – the installation of a pig valve to ensure proper heart function – is that he can occasionally hear his own heart beating.
For a man whose voice and spirit has connected with so many, it somehow seems fitting.
