Ask anyone who knew Kim Love, and they’ll tell you. He was never at a loss for words. It didn’t matter what the occasion was. It could be a job interview, a board meeting or a party. Love was going to say whatever he felt needed to be said, whenever he felt it needed to be said.
That quality didn’t always endear him to everyone. It was sometimes misunderstood. But his intentions, especially when it came to Sheridan, were clear, and he was an outspoken champion for the city up until the end of his life.
Love, 79, died on Saturday at Sheridan Memorial Hospital after a bout with cancer. He was a prominent figure in Wyoming’s broadcasting industry and one-time restaurant owner, as well as a civic leader, who helped build up Sheridan’s downtown and Main Street.
Funeral arrangements have not yet been announced for Love.
The world, his friends and family say, will be a poorer place without Love’s outspoken words. That’s because those words always came from the right place — a sincere place in his heart that just wanted his city, Sheridan, and his state, Wyoming, to be a better place to live.
Bob Grammens, one of two men Love has asked to speak at his funeral, said Love’s passion is what he remembers the most about Love.
That passion is unforgettable, given that evidence of it is all over Sheridan. There’s the Frackelton’s restaurant that he saved on Main Street. There’s Sheridan’s famed art walk in the downtown district, which includes more than 100 bronze statues, and there’s Sheridan Media, the media empire he built and ultimately handed over as a legacy for his employees.
“I’ve spent 40 years with him, and he was an unbelievable mentor, teacher, friend, confidant,” Grammens told Cowboy State Daily. “He was an unbelievable philanthropist for the Sheridan community. Kim had passion in everything he did.”
Love was sought after by many to serve as an advisor for various efforts over the years, Grammens added. But he would only ever join causes where blunt speech was welcomed, and where he felt he could be all in on making a difference.
“It was never halfway,” Grammens said. “It was 110%. That’s the way he was with everything. And I think, sometimes, people may have misunderstood his passion. But I’ve worked with this man for 40 years, and he was unbelievable. People have no idea, behind the scenes, of the things that he gave to. It’s just mind boggling. He had a true heart of gold.”
Longtime friend and former Sheridan mayor David Kinskey agreed.
“He may have been (outspoken) from birth, but I think it was from years of being, essentially in public life,” Kinskey told Cowboy State Daily. “I think it was just honed over years of giving great consideration and thought to what he was going to say and how best to say it, how best to get the point across in the fewest words possible.”
Love was part of an old-school journalism era that’s becoming rarer and rarer, Kinskey added.
“It is a loss, because it’s not just the passing of Kim Love, but it’s also kind of the passing of a whole era, when local news was much more than it is now,” he said. “You used to rely on your local radio station, your local newspaper, and, with the Internet and everything else coming in, it’s just harder and harder for local news to really assume the role, the outside role, that it did during its heyday.”
Rolling With The Punches
Kinskey was part of that heyday starting 40-some years ago, when he took his first job, right out of college, at a station in Newcastle, spinning records for KWYO.
“A friend of mine said, hey, you gotta talk to KROE,” Kinskey recalled. “They’re looking for DJs up there. And I said, that’s the guy who bought that radio station over the flower shop right?’ And he said, ‘No, no, no they’ve got a doublewide now out by the dump.’”
Kinskey laughed at his friend a little bit then, and said, “Okay, that’s better, right?”
But Kinskey kept an eye on what was happening at KROE nonetheless. What he saw impressed him. Love was out there hustling like his life depended on this little radio station making it.
“You would have thought it was his only means of support,” Kinskey said. “He just poured his heart and his soul into that radio station, building it up into what Sheridan Media is today.”
KROE was the first Wyoming station to receive the coveted Crystal Award from the National Association of Broadcasters, and, today, Sheridan Media has not one, but nine radio stations, along with a weekly publication called, “The County Bounty,” and two digital news platforms.
What Kinskey recalls is how much latitude Love gave his DJs, some of whom were mighty young for that kind of trust.
“It was a top 40 format, and so, as long as you did pretty much what you’re supposed to do, you could do it the way that you wanted to,” he said. “And that’s a big gig when you’re 16 years old.”
Over the years, Kinskey maintained his relationship with Love, and, when he ran for statewide office, he was invited onto Love’s public affairs show once a month.
“When I first got in there, I made some pretty high-profile missteps that really had some people angry and excited,” Kinskey recalled. “So, the first time I’m on the program, man, the phones lit up. And when it was time for the first break, the microphones go off and Kim looks at me and goes, ‘I knew you’d make great radio.’”
Over the next six to seven months, Love continued to make “great radio” by asking Kinskey the tough questions and disagreeing with him. Often.
On one occasion, after they’d gone at it over the air in a particularly brutal program, Love turned to Kinskey and said, “This is fun, isn’t it?” Kinskey recalled. “And I said, you know, it really is.”
But what really stuck with Kinskey is what Love said next.
“Because this is a public affairs show, I can have all these little community groups on here and I may disagree with what they’re doing, but I have to do that very gently, if at all, because if you’re too hard, you won’t get anybody on the program,” Kinskey recalled Love saying. “But you’re a different deal. We can really get into it, can’t we?”
Kinskey found he couldn’t, after all, disagree, no matter how uncomfortable it might be.
“I told him I think we need to,” Kinskey said. “And he didn’t spare the punches. He would ask tough, tough questions, and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed rolling with it.”
When Love finally retired from Sheridan Media, he took steps to ensure that the media empire he’d built had a way to continue on, even as he realized that relevance was going to be the challenge for his successors, Grammens said. He did that by turning Sheridan Media into an Employee Owned Stock Program (ESOP). As a result of that, Grammens believes Sheridan Media has what it needs to continue going for another generation, as well as people who have been with the company for decades, including himself.
“I kind of view it as one of his final and lasting gifts to his employees, who worked alongside him in the community for decades,” Grammens said.
A Genius At Philanthropy
What longtime friend Bruce Burns recalls most is Love’s philanthropy.
“He was a genius at (that),” he said. “He didn’t just give money away. He found ingenious ways to give it, to raise it, and to make sure it was effectively used.”
Among these genius ideas, Burns said, was Dining for a Cause, which takes place at Frackelton’s, a restaurant he helped bring back to Main Street, not just once, but twice.
Dining for a Cause has raised well over a million dollars since inception for community organizations like the Sheridan Senior Center, Habitat for Humanity, Salvation Army, and many others. In 2025, the campaign raised more than $130,000 in a single night for The Food Group, a testament to the power Love’s event has gained in the Sheridan community.
“It was a brilliant move,” Burns said. “And it was usually on a Monday, but all the food that was sold that day and that evening went to a particular cause, and he would cover all of the expenses, including the wages and the tips for the help.”
Frackelton’s, by itself, is just one more example of the way Love’s mind was always working for the betterment of his community.
In a 2024 interview with Cowboy State Daily, Love recalled how he first became involved in saving the restaurant that sits at 55 N. Main St. in Sheridan not once, but twice.
“There had been an appliance store where the shoe store is now and it had shut down,” he said in 2024. “The people that own the Hallmark store that was across the street from Frackelton’s had shut down. And Frackelton’s, which was formerly Oliver’s, had shut down.”
Love didn’t want to see one more piece of Main Street die.
“The conventional wisdom at the time was that Main Street was just drying up and shriveling away,” Love said. “And so, I said, ‘Well, I think I can help make a contribution in the community by restarting this restaurant.”
But how, that was the question. He wasn’t in a position to operate it himself. He needed to find someone he could entrust with that mission.
While he was wrestling with that, he happened to go to an early-morning Bible study group at the Holiday Inn.
“That turned out to be a serendipitous event,” he said. “The pastor mentioned that there was a certain member who regularly attended the breakfast, who was no longer attending. He had a personal grievance with the Holiday Inn.”
Love learned that there’d been a change in ownership at the hotel, and that they’d laid off one of the managers, an employee named Dave Youngren.
“And so, I asked, ‘Where is that guy right now?’” Love recalled. “And it turns out he was working in the shoe department at Walmart. And I’m not knocking Walmart or the shoe department, but he was in his early 60s, and that wasn’t where he was planning to be at that stage of his life.”
Love knew he saw a solution to two problems at once, and he didn’t hesitate.
“I got ahold of him, and he came to my office,” Love recalled. “We met for about 10 minutes, and he said, ‘Yep, this is gonna be something that I think will work out.’ And so, he was the one who, actually, in terms of getting it started, he really deserves more credit than I do. I had the idea, but he actually came in and made it happen.”
Youngrenheld the job for five more years after that, getting everything set up just so, before it was time for him to retire.
Love eventually sold the restaurant, but, when things didn’t work out, he reacquired the restaurant and started working on a new game plan.
Toughest Interview Ever
For this second go-round, Love set up a partnership with Ryan Winner and Cody’s Blanca Tatanka owner, Tanner Beemer. His second interview with a general manager for the restaurant, though, was a lot more detailed and a lot longer than 10 minutes, current general manager, Tim Kerr, told Cowboy State Daily.
Kerr had never met Love before but had heard stories about his generosity.
“He would buy turkeys for everyone’s families,” Kerr said. “And he paid everyone’s checks during COVID, and all that stuff. He was this kind of generous shadow figure that I could never put a face or a name to.”
Kerr wasn’t planning to stay in Sheridan after the restaurant failed. He’d been wanting to move back to the East Coast, and the restaurant’s failure had seemed like a sign. But, asked to interview for the role of general manager, he decided to at least hear Love out.
He had no idea what he was in for next.
“I’ve been through a ton of interviews, and some pretty tough ones,” Kerr said. “But he caught me sideways and grilled me. He was tough with it. It’s not often that I get backed down into a corner like that.”
Kerr left the interview thinking he’d completely botched it.
“I walked out of there with my hat in my hand, my tail between my legs, every comparison you could possibly come up with,” Kerr said. “And I even texted one of the guys who had asked me to do this, and I was like, ‘Hey man, I appreciate the offer, but I don’t think there’s any shot he’s going to put me in that spot.’”
His friend told him to wait and see. But Kerr was still shocked to get the job offer after all. That’s when he learned why Love had been so tough on him.
“He looked at me and he goes, ‘Listen, I’m getting older and this is my legacy,’” Kerr recalled. “‘And I want to leave Frackelton’s to Sheridan. This is something I truly, truly care about, and I want to leave it to Sheridan because it is a staple in this city. I want this legacy to be good.”
Kerr already knew the restaurant faced an uphill battle, after being closed for eight months. Knowing that there was a legacy at stake now, too? It was even more pressure.
“That interview will definitely stick with me for sure,” Kerr said. “It wasn’t a negative, but it was an awakening.”
What he’ll remember most though, beyond that tough Love interview, is his former boss’ generosity.
“There’s so much more he’s done for this community than people even know,” he said. “Like Dining for a Cause, which is awesome because it’s super public and it’s good advertising for the restaurant, too. But there’s also so many things behind the scenes that he has done.”
Those things include helping people get through college and paying the salary of a worker who was unfairly fired.
“He didn’t second guess it,” Kerr added. “He’s just like, ‘Yeah, whatever you need. That’s just a generosity that’s kind of disappearing in this day and age anymore.”
A Main Street For The Ages
Frackelton’s wasn’t Love’s only Main Street effort. He was also the driving force behind Sheridan’s art walk, Grammens said, which is part of what makes the Sheridan downtown a bucket list item for Western travelers.
“They add to the character of (downtown Sheridan),” he said. “He was huge into the arts. He just felt the arts really, truly bring out the best in a community.”
Sheridan’s downtown district art includes more than 100 bronze statues, through the Sheridan Public Arts Committee, of which Love was the chair for many years.
Love was also instrumental in bringing a replica of Leonardo da Vinci’s famed “Gran Cavallo,” Italian for Great Horse, to Wyoming. Known locally as the Wyoming Horse, the equestrian monument today sits at the Downtown Sheridan Association Office.
It’s one of only five sculptures ever made of da Vinci’s ambitious horse. There’s a 24-foot-tall da Vinci horse in Milan, and an 8-foot sculpture in da Vinci’s birthplace, Vinci, Italy. There’s also a da Vinci horse at the Da Vinci Science Center in Pennsylvania and the Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Love told Cowboy State Daily in 2024, he heard the story of da Vinci’s unfinished horse while taking an art class at Sheridan College in 2013. Among the course materials was the book, “How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day.”
Love eventually connected with Lin Erickson, then executive director of the Da Vinci Science Center. Erickson, too, was impressed with Love’s passion.
“Kim told me that bronze sculptures are a big part of who they are in Sheridan,” Erickson told Cowboy State Daily in 2024. “It wasn’t exactly what Leonardo was thinking, but horses are a big part of the Western terrain. And he thought that Sheridan should get one of these bronzes.”
Erickson agreed — but Love still had an uphill climb to raise money for the sculpture. That took almost two years, Love said in 2024.
“(That horse) is a staple on one end of Main Street,” Grammens said. “And I think there’s only two other statues of that in the country.”
Dishing It Out, And Taking It Too
Kinskey, along with Grammens, has also been asked to speak at Love’s funeral, and Love has given him specific instructions for that speech.
He wants the same speech Kinskey gave when Love was inducted into the Wyoming Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame.
“And I said, ‘Kim, that speech was just full of laughs.’” Kinskey said. “And he goes, ‘I know. That’s what I want. At my funeral, I want people to enjoy themselves when they remember me. And after the funeral, I want a big party at Frackelton’s.”
Kinskey recalls that Love had to be asked several times to join the Broadcasters Hall of Fame.
“They tried to nominate him a number of times when he still owned Sheridan Media, but he declined,” Kinskey said. “He declined because he said, ‘As long as I’m a member of the industry, then it’s kind of just us passing accolades back and forth amongst each other.’”
He would only accept the honor if he was no longer part of the business.
Laura Grott, current President of Wyoming Association of Broadcasters, told Cowboy State Daily that Love was an instrumental force across Wyoming, through his efforts in the broadcasting industry.
“Despite his many accomplishments, he remained remarkably humble,” she said in an email. “He was initially reluctant to accept our invitation to join the WAB Hall of Fame. Fortunately, in 2018, he graciously agreed, and we were proud to induct him into the Hall — an honor he truly earned. Wyoming broadcasting is stronger because of individuals like Kim Love — professionals who understood that holding an FCC radio license is not just a privilege, but a responsibility to serve the community.”
Scott Anderson, a colleague in the Wyoming Association of Broadcasters, said he was a true mentor to many throughout the state, including himself.
“He took the industry seriously, not just for himself, but for the entire state,” Anderson said. “When I first joined, I bet we only had $100 in the bank account. But through the course of the many years I was involved, Kim played a greater and greater role in managing the board. And he helped to guide us in our fiscal management, so, for that reason, Wyoming broadcasters are now essentially fiscally self-sufficient. That wouldn’t have happened without Kim’s leadership.”
Kinskey’s Broadcasting Hall of Fame speech for Love was more roast than anything else. But there, too, Love showed what he was made of.
“Love laughed harder than anybody else,” Kinskey said.
Proving he could not only dish it out, but take it, too.
“He was always just full of surprises,” Kinskey said. “And he will be missed.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
