Wyoming Radio Legend Overcoming Disfiguring Surgeries From Battles With Cancer

If you’ve ever listened to morning radio in Cheyenne, high school sports or coverage of Cheyenne Frontier Days on the FM airwaves, you’d instantly recognize Larry Proietti's baritone voice. 

Unmistakable and authoritative, if his voice were a car, it’d be V-8 Ford Mustang: low and sonorous with power, purr and expressive range.

“BANG! That dog’ll hunt!” you’ve heard him exclaim while covering sports tournaments in his uniquely visceral style of play-by-play.

His career in radio broadcasting dates to 1966, when a then 9-year-old Proietti began voicing radio commercials for a station in Pittsburg, California. 

By 2015, he was four decades into a stellar radio career and nowhere near done. He’d recently purchased the KYOY and KRAY channels with plans to expand programming. 

However, that year he also received an unexpected medical diagnosis,and suddenly his life looked set to go off air for good.

The first signs were increased nose bleeds, which he dismissed as the result of dry Wyoming air. Then scabs and raw skin tissue began turning up in his Kleenex and he knew it was serious.

He was diagnosed with a type of nasal cancer called squamous cell carcinoma. The cancer had eaten through his septum from one nostril to the other and looked ready to spread to his lymph nodes.

He remembers the blank way he stared at his doctor, frozen up in existential emotion as images of his mother’s death by cancer flashed vividly in his mind. 

“It’s hard to describe what that's like, but it was like, ‘Wow, cancer, I’m done for. I better start making funeral arrangements,’” he said.

Yet Proietti is a fighter, so the funeral would have to wait. 

He's cancer free now, having defied death with the help of medical specialists who successfully removed the carcinoma from his nose. But he also had to lay to rest a different part of himself, and he quickly discovered the biggest battle lay ahead. 

“After the surgeries, I couldn't look at myself in the mirror,” he said. “I couldn't do it because it wasn’t me. I wanted to cry. My facial features had changed so much — it wasn’t me anymore. I was like I’d been filleted.”

‘I Felt Like I Had A Halloween Mask On’

Without embellishment, it's easy to say that Proietti had always been a handsome guy: Strong features, olive skin, a winning smile and athletic physique.

He played collegiate baseball and maintained athleticism into his 60s. Up until recently, he’d been competing in a multistate, over-60 baseball league, where he was a formidable pitcher. 

Surgery changed all of that.

His reconstructed nose was formed from skin taken from his forehead, with structure provided by a piece of cartilage removed from his rib.

But the result was a nose that lay flat like a patty and appeared to have migrated down his face, perching upon the crest of his upper lip.

“I'm a person that took care of himself and I was blessed by mom and dad with decent looks, and they were gone,” he said, adding that he felt obliged to recede from the world. “I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. I would give anything to look the way I used to look, to have my original face again.

“I don't want to say I was a complete monster, but I felt like I had a Halloween mask on. I didn't want to scare the kids and scare other people.”

But Proietti was too purpose-driven to stay hidden for long, so he swallowed his pride and got back to work.

“I think back to the original surgeries in 2016, the convalescing, and I gotta be real honest with you, I hated it,” he said. “I hated sitting at home. I hated being on [medical] air. 

“So, one day I just said screw this I can't be at home. I had to go back and do what I do, be on the radio, run the daily operation.”

He described how his staff reacted to his appearance with shock, which was just one of many changes he’d need to adjust to. 

With his breathing capacity diminished, he had to cut back on his airtime and could only manage 10-second spots at a time. He needed to insert a drinking straw in his nose to enable an adequate air flow. 

He says his “freakish look” impacted his interactions with industry folk as well. Prospective partners and sponsors proved unable to put the distraction of his facial features out of mind during face-to-face meetings. 

“It impacted me from a business standpoint. I didn't want to go out and attract new business, because I'd have to meet people for the first time,” he said, offering the example of how a business solicitation commonly unfolded.

"I sat down with one business in town, I won’t say who it is, met this person for the first time, and all they could do was stare at me. I could tell it made them uncomfortable and that made me feel uncomfortable,” he said.

A Superhero Grounded

Nick Proietti is his father’s No. 1 fan, and vice versa. 

“When I was playing at Cheyenne East High School, he was always on the sidelines cheering me on again. Busy as he was, he always made time. He was that parent that was always there to cheer us on when he could,” said Nick Proietti of his father.

He describes his upbringing in the Proietti household as fast paced and progress driven, as his father worked hard to instill in the family an appetite for big dreams and the competitive spirit needed to achieve them.

“He could be intense, but that intensity is filled with passion and love and a kind of devotion to what he does in life. You saw that with how he wanted to grow our radio stations into something bigger and better,” said Nick Proietti. “Not pigeonholed to Wyoming, but stations that could be in Denver or New York City. Day in and day out, he wanted to be the best and stay the best and provide the best product.”

Nick Prioetti followed in his father’s broadcast footsteps, and at points of their careers they’ve worked side by side, including sports broadcasting in Cheyenne: Larry Prioetti with the play-by-play, Nick Proietti with the color.  

In the ethos of big dreams, however, Nick Proietti’s career took him away from Wyoming: first to Denver, then Las Vegas and then onto to Big Springs Texas, where he is now the general manager for two radio stations.

He continued to hold onto the idea of returning to Wyoming to work once more side by side with his father. But then he got a call in 2015, and it suddenly appeared like that possibility would never become a reality.

“Before then I remember he was having issues with more and more nose bleeds, and it worried me, but I thought it was just the dry Wyoming air or maybe it comes with age,” he said. “Then I got the call, and he said it was nose cancer. We both had this moment. My reaction was that sinking, pit feeling in your stomach. I was in disbelief.”

‘A Moment That Changed Both Of Us’

Nick Proietti arranged time off work and flew to Denver for the surgery. Up until then, he’d had a fixed sense of who his father was. But seeing him in an altered and vulnerable state shook him deeply. 

“There was relief after the surgery, but that feeling of relief went aside when I walked into the recovery room,” he said. “I saw things they did to his face … and it was jarring, the incisions, you could see inside the skin and [facial] bone. I thought, that’s not the same man and the same face I’ve known for 26 years.”

At the sight of his father’s rearranged face along with the medical bags of bodily fluid dangling from his stapled neck, the younger Proietti became faint. 

“The nurse saw me turning pale white, saw me getting dizzy,” he said. “She quickly grabbed a chair and pushed me into it.” 

For the next week, he slept on a tiny couch in the hospital room at his father’s side.

During that time, Nick Proietti’s entire lens on life was changed. The man he’d always known as the model of fortitude and strength had become hobbled, and it created a new sense of vulnerability in himself as a result.

“With your father and your parents in general, I always saw them like superheroes. They teach you everything, you learn from them, it sort of feels like they're untouchable. And then something happens …” said NickProietti, pausing to reflect.

“For a man that had never shown a lot of weakness, this was a moment that changed both of us,” he said. “He looked at me and just kind of broke down and talked about how much he loved me and my sister.”

Larry Proietti said he’ll never forget those moments with his son. 

“My son being with me for both of those surgeries, he was the biggest inspiration. When I awoke and I saw my son, there was relief and I owe so much to him being there for me,” said Larry Proietti. 

The experience has brought them closer. They make greater efforts to connect and appreciate the time they’re able to spend.

“After this, I see my parents in a new light. I try to try to appreciate them even more than I already had,” said Nick Proietti. “I'll get those calls more frequently, texts more frequently. He gives me updates about him and his new dog and asks about my life and how I’m doing. And I appreciate the time that I can get with him so much more.”

What’s Next

Larry Proietti is still striving to improve as a person and professional, perhaps harder than he ever has. He’s poured himself with greater enthusiasm into his radio stations and says he’s not going to take his time on earth for granted. 

“I'm hard on myself, because it's like there's so much more I want to do in my life, from a business standpoint and everything else, all the little things,” he said. “I want to live to make my 50-year class reunion. I want to see my children and myself and hopefully one day hold my son or granddaughter.”

He’s back on air with a Sunday morning program while promoting and strengthening the station's other shows.

He also continues to strive to improve the state of his appearance. In June, he went back for a fifth reconstructive surgery, which proved to be the most successful to date. 

His nose was lifted off his upper lip and placed back near its proper place. His nostril has been opened to give him greater air passage. He no longer feels like he’s wearing a Halloween mask. 

“Am I a great looking guy? No. But I’m happy I have a profile again. I can turn sideways, and my face doesn't disappear, and I have a little more confidence about me,” he said.

With that new confidence, he’s charging into the autumn of his life as though it were the spring.

“To quote Lou Gehrig, even though he eventually died from his disease, I do feel like I'm the luckiest man on the face of the earth,” Larry Proietti said. “I did get a second chance, and I'm not going to blow that second chance. 

“I'm going to try to live as long as I can. Yeah, time is catching up, but that doesn't mean I need to grow old.”

Contact Zakary Sonntag at zakary@cowboystatedaily.com

Zakary Sonntag can be reached at zakary@cowboystatedaily.com.