Beck's rants earn him millions of fans but also a share of enemies, which comes with the talk-show territory. He stays in hotels under an alias, and never the same hotel in which he has a speaking engagement. He is followed everywhere by a large man named Adam, whose primary job is security.

"I take care of him and his family," says Adam, standing by the entrance to a large room where Beck is speaking. "Some people don't like him. We have had some situations that required action; unfortunately, that's the world we live in."

Balfe believes Beck's on-air personality is vastly misleading. If he was once a prima donna who was prickly to work with, he seems to go out of his way to undo the meanness of his former self. He once bumped into a group of fans outside his radio studio and invited them to eat lunch with him, his treat, and worries constantly about how he treats people.

"He is much more concerned and more serious about how he treats people than he would come across on the air," says Balfe. "None of that is the real Glenn. You can't imagine how much all of us love our jobs here. We've been with him a long time, and you don't see that often with people who become famous and get a TV show."

Beck's on-air intensity might belie it, but Tania, along with his religious conversion, has been a calming presence for him. Beck's staff has noticed that at some point during his biannual two-week road trips for the stage shows that Beck becomes withdrawn and increasingly pensive. Their solution is to arrange, unbidden, for Tania to fly in from Connecticut.

"I'm sorry to say I'm a leech on Tania," he says. "I see her as a power source. I need to have her around me, and my staff sees this. She is a dynamo of goodness."

"He treats me like a queen," says Tania, a quiet, petite blonde with vivid blue eyes. "He is an amazing husband."

They married three months after they were baptized, in 2000, and were sealed in the LDS temple a year later. They hoard family time where they can get it.

Beck's driver picks him up at 6 a.m., and he's in the studio by 7 prepping for his shows, followed by the three-hour radio broadcast from 9 to noon, followed by more meetings from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m., then preparation for the TV show from 1:30 to 3, then taping the TV show from 3 to 6, and then home, although there are occasions he will work until midnight on one of his other projects.

"I'm tired just being in the building with him," says Balfe. "But he has to perform. He has the ability to turn it on."

Beck, who says he gets five hours of sleep "on a good night," makes a point of being home to have dinner with his family and to read to their two children, Raphe, 3, and Cheyenne, 18 months. He talks to Mary, who is 19 and has cerebral palsy, and Hannah, 15, by phone daily and tries to visit them regularly.