Making a better Glenn Beck

"The Glenn Beck Program" boasts the third-largest radio audience in the nation, attracting more than 5 million listeners a day on 280 stations. Another 1 million people watch Beck's show on cable's Headline News each weeknight. Beck's Web site, GlennBeck.com, receives more than 3 million visitors a month. Some 125,000 people have seen Beck perform one of his live stage shows.

How big has Beck become in just six years since he made the leap from DJ to talk-show host? After calling out President Bush on the Iraq war on the air one day, he received a phone call from the White House. "The president would like to meet with you for an hour," a White House official told him. He flew to Washington for a one-on-one, off-the-record meeting with President Bush. (More on this later.)

Over breakfast in Salt Lake City a few days later, Beck shakes his head in disbelief as he ponders the turn of events that led him from a 12-step program to the Oval Office.

"If I were not to stand in awe of my life, I would be a most ungrateful son of our Heavenly Father's," says Beck. "It is a full-fledged miracle."

Beck's story is familiar to anyone who listens to the show. Only a few years ago he was an ornery disc jockey who was studying religion and philosophy and searching for some deeper meaning in his life while recovering from divorce and alcoholism. He found that meaning in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and his second wife, Tania.

Beck, who grew up in the Seattle area with two sisters and a stepbrother, describes his humble roots this way: "I'm a schmo. My family never made more than $25,000 a year. We're all bakers for generations." He was 8 years old when he received a collection of records from the "golden age" of radio. Mesmerized by the stories of Orson Welles, among others, he decided he wanted some role in radio.

At 13, Beck won a local radio contest to be a DJ for an hour. That led to three on-air jobs at three different stations, although he likes to note that he was fired by all three of them on the same day a year later.

After graduating from high school, he worked for three stations in 13 months. He worked briefly for K96 in Provo, but he says he wore out his welcome quickly "by hanging out with the wrong crowd." From there, he took another DJ position in Washington before moving on to Corpus Christi, Texas, where he became the youngest morning DJ in the country. That led to top 40 shows in Baltimore, Houston, Phoenix and Washington. Soon he was wealthy, successful, married and the father of two children.