Howard Stern Trivia
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48 free Howard Stern trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Howard Stern's first full-time radio job paid $96 a week, he rented a room in a monastery, and he once quit a Hartford station over a denied $25 raise. Two decades later he was syndicated in 60 markets with 20 million listeners, had topped the bestseller list twice and the box office once, and signed a $500 million satellite deal. These 48 questions trace the career: Boston University and WRNW, Detroit and Washington, the WNBC firing, K-Rock and national syndication, Robin Quivers, Fred Norris and Gary "Baba Booey" Dell'Abate, the FCC fines, the 1994 run for governor, Private Parts the book and the film, Son of the Beach, the move to Sirius in 2006, America's Got Talent, the Radio Hall of Fame and the Springsteen and Biden interviews. Career facts and production details only. Every answer is cited to a page we checked. Play in sets of ten or print the list.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which New York City borough was Howard Stern born in January 1954?
Queens
Queens: he was born in Jackson Heights, though some references give Roosevelt, the Long Island town the family moved to a year later, where he grew up as one of the few white pupils at his school.
Q 02Stern's father Ben worked as a radio engineer and co-owned what kind of business in Manhattan?
A recording studio
A recording studio: visiting it, the young Howard watched Don Adams and Larry Storch voice the Tennessee Tuxedo cartoons and decided theirs was the job he wanted.
Q 03As a boy, Howard Stern staged lewd shows for friends using what?
Marionettes
Marionettes: he named the act The Perverted Marionette Show and later said he had taken something innocent and ruined it.
Q 04Howard Stern began in radio at the campus station of which university?
Boston University
Boston University: he worked at its student station and cast his future wife in one of his student films.
Q 05Which practice does Howard Stern say he turns to after every show to switch off?
Transcendental Meditation
Transcendental Meditation: he took it up as a student at his parents' urging, credits it with helping him quit smoking, and once made a student film about it.
Q 06Where did the young Stern rent a room to save money while working at WRNW?
A monastery
A monastery in Armonk, New York: his first full-time radio job paid just $96 a week, so he lived there until a morning show in Hartford hired him away.
Q 07Which game did Howard Stern study so obsessively for three years that he treated it like a job?
Chess
Chess: he said he pushed everything else aside for it, then set it aside in 2011 and took up photography.
Q 08Which longtime writer and sound-effects man did Howard Stern first meet at Hartford's WCCC in 1979?
Fred Norris
Fred Norris was a college student working at the station; two years later, when Stern's ratings took off at another station, Norris was the first person he was allowed to hire.
Q 09Stern left Detroit's WWWW in 1981 after the station abruptly switched to which format?
Country
Country: nine months into the job he woke one morning to find the station had changed format. He said he had no tolerance for the music and quit rather than play it.
Q 10In which city did Howard Stern first team up with newsreader Robin Quivers, in 1981?
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.: Quivers took the job at WWDC after hearing a tape of his show, without having met him, and expected simply to read the news.
Q 11Before radio, Robin Quivers served as a nurse in which branch of the military?
Air Force
Air Force: she left as a captain, retrained at a broadcasting school in Baltimore and was reading the news on local radio when the offer came to join a new morning show.
Q 12In 1984 Howard Stern made the first of his many guest appearances on which host's late-night show?
David Letterman
David Letterman had him on Late Night in May 1984, when Stern was still an afternoon host on New York radio; the spot and a People magazine feature brought him to a national audience.
Q 13With which WNBC morning host did Stern begin a long-running feud in the 1980s?
Don Imus
Q 21Staffer "Stuttering John" Melendez became known for doing what?
Asking celebrities awkward questions
Asking celebrities awkward questions: the gag relied on stars being too polite to brush off a reporter with a stutter, and the questions were written for him by Stern and his writers.
Q 22Which venue sold out in four hours for the 1989 Stern vs. Dell'Abate tennis match?
Nassau Coliseum
Nassau Coliseum: all 16,000 seats went in four hours for the match, staged as U.S. Open Sores. Stern lost, then sold the videotape to tens of thousands of listeners.
Q 23Stern's 1990-92 WWOR-TV variety show regularly out-rated which NBC program in New York?
Don Imus held the morning slot, so Stern was given afternoons; after moving to a rival station he switched to mornings to take Imus on directly, and within a year led him in the ratings.
Q 14Stuttering John Melendez left the Stern show in 2004 to become the announcer on whose late-night show?
Jay Leno
Jay Leno made him The Tonight Show's announcer after 16 years on the Stern show, which he had joined as an intern, hired sight unseen because of his stutter.
Q 15After WNBC fired him in 1985, Howard Stern resurfaced on which New York FM station, his home for 20 years?
K-Rock
K-Rock (WXRK) put him on in the afternoons that November, then within months moved him to mornings so he could go head to head with his old station.
Q 16Howard Stern's show was first syndicated in 1986 to a station in which city?
Philadelphia
Philadelphia's WYSP began carrying the New York show; once he had overtaken the city's top morning host, he went there to stage a mock funeral for his beaten rival.
Q 17At its peak, roughly how many listeners did the syndicated Howard Stern Show reach?
20 million
20 million was the late-1990s estimate, though such figures were loose guesses: in 1994 the numbers quoted for his audience ran anywhere from 4 million to 16 million.
Q 18Gary Dell'Abate's nickname Baba Booey came from mangling the name of whose cartoon sidekick?
Quick Draw McGraw's
Quick Draw McGraw's sidekick is Baba Looey; Dell'Abate got the name wrong in 1990 while describing his cartoon-art collection, and fans have been shouting "Baba Booey" into live broadcasts ever since.
Q 19Which band did Howard Stern induct into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018?
Bon Jovi
Bon Jovi: in his speech Stern said you can't go anywhere in the world without hearing one of their songs, and thanked the band "from the bottom of my heart".
Q 20Which stand-up comedian was Howard Stern's in-studio joke writer from the 1980s until 2001?
Jackie Martling
Jackie Martling, "the Joke Man", got in by mailing Stern his comedy albums in 1983; for years he fed him handwritten gags across the desk while the show was on the air.
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live: his cheaply made Channel 9 show often drew the bigger New York audience. It still ended in 1992, when the station said it cost more than it earned.
Q 24Which mock-regal title has Howard Stern given himself since 1992?
King of All Media
King of All Media began as a boast, but within five years he had a No. 1 book, a No. 1 film and a No. 1 soundtrack album to back it up.
Q 25In October 1992 Stern became the first to top morning radio in both New York and which city?
Los Angeles
Los Angeles: just over a year after his debut there he unseated a morning team that had led the market for three years.
Q 26At which 1992 awards show did Howard Stern appear on stage as his flatulent superhero, Fartman?
MTV Video Music Awards
MTV Video Music Awards: he presented an award in the costume with Luke Perry, and a Fartman feature film was announced, only to collapse the next year in rows over its rating and merchandise.
Q 27Which publisher released Stern's first book, Private Parts, in October 1993?
Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster saw the first printing of 225,000 copies vanish within hours; five days after publication it was the fastest-selling title in the firm's history.
Q 28Howard Stern's 1993 New Year's Eve pay-per-view special was a parody of what kind of event?
A beauty pageant
A beauty pageant: some 400,000 homes paid to watch contestants compete in stunts such as eating live bugs, making it the biggest pay-per-view yet outside sport.
Q 29After Stern backed her 1993 campaign, Governor Christine Todd Whitman named what after him?
A highway rest stop
A highway rest stop on Interstate 295: Whitman was repaying the airtime he gave her during the race, and her party, not the taxpayer, paid for the plaque.
Q 30On which party's ticket did Stern announce a run for Governor of New York in March 1994?
Libertarian
Libertarian: he won the party's nomination promising to bring back the death penalty and then resign, but quit the race rather than disclose his income as candidates must.