Ted Williams Went Viral, Then Relapsed. His Golden Voice Survived

Last updated on October 31st, 2026 at 10:24 am

Ted Williams is the Brooklyn-born radio announcer who became known as the man with the golden voice in January 2011, after a 90-second newspaper video of him asking for money beside a highway ramp in Columbus, Ohio, spread across the internet within days. Job offers arrived almost as fast as the views. So did old trouble.

Most retellings stop at the happy part, but the long stretch afterward is where the story earns its place: the rehab he left early, the job offer that was reportedly pulled, the quiet years of voice work, and a 2025 film role that proved the voice was still wanted.

Do not be afraid; our fate cannot be taken from us; it is a gift.

Dante Alighieri

This piece follows the whole arc, and every date below was checked against news reports.

Ted Williams at a glance

• Who: Theodore Fred Williams, born September 22, 1957, in Brooklyn, a former overnight DJ at WVKO in Columbus, Ohio.
• The fall: He says his life began unravelling in 1986 through drugs and alcohol; he was dismissed from radio in 1994, and he went almost 20 years without steady work.
• The video: Columbus Dispatch videographer Doral Chenoweth posted his interview on January 3, 2011. The Cleveland Cavaliers, MSNBC and Kraft all moved within days.
• The setback: By January 12, 2011, nine days after the video went up, he admitted to Dr. Phil that he was drinking heavily again. He entered rehab, left after 12 days, and returned to treatment in May 2011.
• The comeback: In May 2012, he said he had been sober for more than a year. By 2013, he had steady Kraft voice work and a nonprofit. In 2025, he appeared in the film Marty Supreme.
• The takeaway: Going viral gave him a door. Staying sober and employed was slower, quieter work.

Ted Williams at a glance

When	What happened
Sept. 22, 1957	Born in Brooklyn, New York
1971	At 14, visits a radio station on a field trip
Early 1980s	Works late-night shifts at WVKO in Columbus
1986	Says his life starts falling apart
1994	Dismissed from radio and evicted from his house
Jan. 3, 2011	Dispatch posts the golden voice video
Jan. 5 to 7, 2011	Cavaliers offer, Today show lead-in, MSNBC hires him
Jan. 12 to 24, 2011	Admits relapse, enters Texas rehab, leaves after 12 days
May 2011	Returns to rehab; Cavaliers offer reported withdrawn
May 2012	Says he has been sober more than a year
2013	Steady Kraft work, Ted Williams Project, narrates Houseless
2025	Appears in Marty Supreme

Who is Ted Williams, the man with the golden voice?

Ted Williams is an American announcer, radio personality and voice-over artist, born Theodore Fred Williams on September 22, 1957. He grew up in Brooklyn, served three years in the U.S. Army, left with an honorable discharge, and then studied voice acting.

Columbus, Ohio, became his base. In the early 1980s, he worked overnight as a disc jockey at WVKO, then a soul music station.

The origin of the voice is the part I find most useful. In 1971, when he was fourteen, a field trip showed him that a radio announcer he admired looked nothing like the person he had imagined.

My read is that this taught him something no classroom could: a voice carries its own authority, and nobody has to see the person behind it. Williams built a career on that idea. Decades later, it was the only asset he still had in his hands.

He is also a father of nine, two sons and seven daughters. Keep that number in mind. It is the quiet cost running underneath every part of this story.

How did a radio announcer end up begging on an Ohio off-ramp?

Williams has said his life started falling apart in 1986, when drug and alcohol abuse combined with a loss of interest in his career. The station dismissed him in 1994 for alcoholism and drug abuse, and he was evicted from his house the same year.

From there, the record gets uncomfortable. He was arrested at least seven times on charges including theft, drug possession, escape and robbery. He served two jail terms, three months in 1990 for theft and nearly two months in 2004 for theft, forgery and obstructing official business.

In his memoir he reflects on abandoning his children while in the grip of cocaine addiction.

I include the arrests because softer retellings leave them out, and the story gets cheaper without them. Williams was not a flawless victim waiting to be discovered. He hurt people, and he has said so himself. His comeback matters precisely because both things are true at once: real damage and real talent.

By late December 2010 he was standing at a highway ramp in Columbus holding a cardboard sign that advertised his voice and asked for donations (CS Monitor). He had not held steady work in almost 20 years.

What happened in the video that made Ted Williams famous?

On a grocery run with his wife, Columbus Dispatch videographer Doral Chenoweth III noticed a man in a camouflage jacket holding a cardboard sign at an interstate off-ramp (Yahoo News). He stopped to hear the man’s story, then came back a few days later with a simple Flip camera (Newswire).

His opening line, as Time reported it, was “I’m going to make you work for your dollar” (Time). Chenoweth has said he filmed Williams on a whim (Michigan Public).

What came out of Williams’s mouth next was the whole story. The clip shows a disheveled man gratefully accepting a donation, then improvising a polished radio promo, followed by a short interview about his education and the problems that led to his homelessness.

It was shot at the Hudson Street exit off Interstate 71 (Wikipedia). The Dispatch posted it on its website on January 3, 2011, and within days that 90-second video had made Williams an international name (Global News). By January 5, NPR’s news blog was filing it under the headline “Must-See Video” (NPR).

Why did it spread so fast? My theory is contrast. Williams looked like a person most drivers pass without a glance and sounded like someone they would pay to hear. People were not forwarding a news story.

They were forwarding a small magic trick, and the magic worked because it exposed how much talent we step around every day.

Which job offers did the golden voice actually bring?

Three offers are well documented. On January 5, 2011, the Cleveland Cavaliers offered Williams a full-time voice-over job with the team and Quicken Loans Arena, plus a home, and he answered, “That’s the best deal ever!” (Wikipedia; WBEZ). On January 7, MSNBC hired him to voice its network promos. Kraft Foods also chose him as the voice of a new macaroni and cheese campaign.

The media tour moved faster than anyone could process. He appeared on CBS’s The Early Show on January 5, voiced the lead-in to Today on January 6, and the same day appeared on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and The Rachel Maddow Show.

Also on January 6, he was reunited in New York with his mother, Julia Williams, then 90. He later said she told him he would have to learn to “meditate and not medicate” (AP via Star-Advertiser). In hindsight, that may be the most prophetic sentence in the whole saga.

One detail needs correcting, because it floats around the internet: ESPN did not hire him. The Kraft campaign reportedly launched on ESPN during the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl on January 9, although Wikipedia itself flags that claim as needing a better source. The Cavaliers, MSNBC and Kraft are the three offers I can document.

Why did Ted Williams relapse right after going viral?

Williams said he had been sober since mid-2008, but that he started drinking again once the media attention arrived.

On January 12, 2011, after a long one-on-one talk with Dr. Phil McGraw, he admitted he was drinking heavily again and agreed to enter Origins Recovery Center, a Texas facility McGraw arranged (CBS News). He checked himself out after 12 days (CNN). Later he told reporters that the program felt scripted and lacked anonymity, and that he did not want to bash Dr. Phil.

I am not going to judge that decision. Public rehab arranged around a television talk show is a strange place to get well. Still, leaving after 12 days was not a clean ending either. On March 9, 2011, he told Today he was living in a sober house in Studio City, Los Angeles.

On May 6 it was announced that he would enter a Texas rehabilitation facility again, this time for emotional reasons rather than narcotics. His book and reality show were put on hold. The next day, The News-Herald reported that the Cavaliers had retracted their job offer.

Does a relapse mean treatment failed? Not according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. In an older NIDA treatment guide, the agency listed relapse rates of 40 to 60 percent for drug addiction, next to 50 to 70 percent for hypertension and asthma, and said relapse should lead to adjusting treatment rather than declaring it a failure (NIDA archive).

That is the frame I would use for Williams. He had a chronic condition, a sudden flood of attention, and no quiet runway. A setback in that setting is hard to call surprising.

Did Ted Williams get his second chance after all?

Mostly yes, though not in a straight line. In November 2011, New England Cable News named him its official voice, with Williams working from a home studio in Dublin, Ohio.

In February 2012 he fronted a Kraft YouTube campaign reading tweeted declarations of love. In May 2012 he told Today he had been clean and sober for more than a year, was working, and was doing well. That month he also went on The Wendy Williams Show to discuss his relapse and the start of reconciling with his nine children.

The whole account is in his memoir, A Golden Voice: How Faith, Hard Work, and Humility Brought Me from the Streets to Salvation, written with Bret Witter.

By January 2013 he told Today he lived in an apartment and worked steadily as a commercial voice-over artist for Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, though the reporter noted that his relationships with his children were still strained. He had also started the Ted Williams Project with Kraft, a nonprofit that provides necessities to homeless shelters.

In September 2013 he narrated Houseless, a film about life on the streets, and talked about the daily struggle of staying sober.

The middle years were not tidy. In October 2014, the Dispatch’s own follow-up described him as clean and sober but struggling to pay the bills (Columbus Dispatch). In June 2015 he announced an independent run for president and withdrew on August 26.

He returned to WVKO as a morning host in January 2016, but by April 2016 the show was gone. On April 23, 2021, he announced a run for Ohio governor as a Democrat (Columbus Dispatch). A week later Spectrum News reported that he was not running (Spectrum News). I cannot say why, and I would rather not guess.

The most recent chapter is the sweetest. In 2025 he appeared in Marty Supreme as Ted, a table tennis parlor employee. Director Josh Safdie insisted on casting him for the quality of his voice, despite crew concerns about union complications and the cost of flying him in.

Fifteen years after a highway ramp, someone paid for the voice itself.

What do other pages get wrong about Ted Williams?

A few errors keep circulating, so here is the short corrective list.

• His hometown. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York City, not “Brookline”.
• The ESPN job. I found no record of an ESPN job offer. The documented offers came from the Cavaliers, MSNBC and Kraft.
• The drug. Reports describe alcohol and cocaine.
• The politics. His 2015 presidential run was withdrawn in August of that year, and his 2021 governor announcement was reported as not going ahead a week later (Spectrum News).
• The overnight cure. He did not go from street to sober full-time worker in a flash. The relapse, two rehab stays and years of smaller jobs are all documented above.

What does Ted Williams’s story teach us today?

The point I keep returning to is visibility. We treat discovery as the happy ending: the video goes up, the offers arrive, the credits roll. Williams’s January 2011 shows the opposite. Being seen was the easy part. Carrying the attention was the work.

That matters now because homelessness is not a distant statistic. HUD’s 2025 report counted 745,652 people experiencing homelessness on a single night in January 2025, including 266,320 living unsheltered (HUD). It was the first overall decline since 2016 (National Alliance to End Homelessness).

The year before, the count had reached 771,480, the highest on record (Congressional Research Service). Behind every number is a person with a skill nobody has asked to see. Chenoweth asked, and 90 seconds rearranged Williams’s year. I would not turn that into a promise that everyone gets a viral rescue. Most will not, and they should not need one.

Here are five lessons I take from the full arc, not just the highlight reel.

1. Ask what people can do, not only what they need. Chenoweth’s “work for your dollar” request treated a man at an off-ramp as a professional for a minute and a half. That framing did more than the donation did.
2. Treat the first month after good news as the risky part. Williams relapsed nine days into the fame. If you or someone you love is handling a sudden win, line up support before the phone starts ringing, not after.
3. Expect big offers to be conditional. The Cavaliers job, the loudest offer of all, was reportedly retracted by May 2011. Lasting income came from several smaller clients, such as Kraft and NECN.
4. Count recovery in years, not episodes. NIDA’s 40 to 60 percent relapse range describes a chronic condition, not a character flaw. Williams reported more than a year of sobriety by May 2012, after two treatment stays.
5. Let the gift stay useful after the story fades. The proof that his voice mattered is not the viral clip. It is a director in 2025 insisting on that voice for a small role, despite the cost.

If this angle interests you, my piece on what Outliers says about who succeeds and why pairs well with it, and Unrequited Love Hurts Like Addiction looks at the science of craving from a different angle.

Which quotes from the Ted Williams story are worth keeping?

A handful of lines carry the story better than any summary.

• Chenoweth to Williams at the off-ramp: “I’m going to make you work for your dollar” (Time).
• Williams on the Cavaliers offer: “That’s the best deal ever!”
• His mother’s warning, as he relayed it: learn to “meditate and not medicate” (AP via Star-Advertiser).
• Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote in The Valley of Fear (1915): “Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius” (Kwize). It is narration about Inspector MacDonald, not a line spoken by Holmes, and it suits this story: Chenoweth heard the talent instantly.

Frequently asked questions

Final thoughts

Ted Williams’s story is usually told as a miracle. I find it more useful as a case study. A skilled man lost everything, a stranger with a camera gave him 90 seconds of dignity, and the world responded with offers it was not prepared to see him through.

The miracle, if there is one, came later and less loudly, in apartments, studios, sober days and a small film role. If you are looking for a story about the power of being noticed, this is one.

If you are looking for a story about what comes after being noticed, it is a better one.

---