For 26 years, he entertained Atlanta radio listeners as the morning host of Country WKHX-FM under its “Kicks 101.5” era. In February 2017, a health scare required surgery to install three stents to clear a blockage to one side of his heart, and recovery from a heart attack.
On April 21, another heart attack would claim the life of a radio host who used the name “Cadillac Jack” across a career that had its ups and downs and time away from the South’s largest market.
News of William Choate‘s passing was shared on social media by his former wife, Donna Kaye Choate.
As “Cadillac Jack,” he was most recently heard on WEKS-FM 92.5 “The Bear” in Zebulon, Ga., a Country station heard in the southern portion of the Atlanta metropolitan area. In recent weeks, Choate was finishing up writing for the final chapter of “Monkey’s Fly,” and had signed with a literary agent to consider publishing options. It was a positive trajectory for Choate that had come following various health scares. In August 2024, he posted on his personal Facebook feed that “for the last two years, I have been struggling.” He acknowledged that he had just completed “a very intensive in-patient mental health assessment at two local wellness centers” in greater Atlanta. “There were several significant life events I never fully processed as the loss of both my parents within a year and the loss of a 28-year job that I f-king loved, and that was my life (outside of Donna and the kids),” he wrote.
That job loss was a bitter one, as a five-year legal battle was waged between Choate and Cumulus Media ended with a settlement agreement that also came in August 2024.
The war between WKHX’s owner and “Cadillac Jack” was protracted, and saw Mr. Choate assert that Cumulus Media engaged in a Title VII violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in which he claimed “gender and sexual orientation discrimination.” Choate’s sexual orientation, he alleged in a January 2023 appeal of a lower court’s ruling favoring Cumulus, became a problem with the VP/Market Manager for Cumulus’ Atlanta stations circa spring 2015 — Sean Shannon. Atlanta Journal-Constitution radio columnist Rodney Ho detailed Choate’s allegations in a January 2020 report that said Choate is bisexual.
That said, a July 12, 2019 Luke Combs concert altercation that received much press at the time has been said by some as the ultimate arbiter in how Choate lost his longtime WKHX job. When fired, Choate had 22 months remaining on his contract with Cumulus and sought $732,258.05 based on the contract’s terms, as he saw it.
In November 2021, with litigation still ongoing, Choate resurfaced at WEKS. He exited that station one year ago.
Choate is not to be confused with the “Cadillac Jack” heard on WDSY “Y108” in Pittsburgh who also served in programming at WHEL-FM in Fort Myers, Fla.
