Via Don Barrett's LARADIO.COM from Monday's issue:

Tom Leykis Shocks His Fans and Friends
With Announcement of Split with His Wife

(March 26, 2001) Tom Leykis, with no fanfare or tease, told his loyal KLSX and syndicated afternoon drive audience on Friday that he and his wife Susan have separated. The surprise announcement even caught his colleagues off guard. "I didn't know about it until Tom told me at lunch on Friday," said KLSX pd Jack Silver. Not that one thing has anything to do with the other, KLSX morning driver Howard Stern separated from his wife recently.

This is the full text of Tom's statement Friday afternoon:

"Now before we do anything else, I want to say something here and you will note that I did not promote this in advance. I have not teased it, and I have tried not to exploit this in any way because some things are, I think above that.

You may wonder, do I have a line? Where do I draw it? Well, now you are seeing where at least the line might be drawn. What I am about to say, not only did I not promote it to you, it is something personal and a number of my friends don't know anything about it and they are about to find it out the first time as well, about me.

You will find out as I tell it to you over the next few minutes why my friends don't know about it. Why nobody knows about it. And, why I haven't made a big deal about it. And as a matter of fact, the reason I am doing this on a Friday is because I had no intention of turning it into a topic. I have no intention of going on the air and many times things have happened to me and I have made lemons into lemonade.

I have come on the air and used things that have happened. Arguments I have had with people. Arguments I have had with ex-wives or girl friends or whatever. I have used that stuff as show material and I must tell you that this time around I am not doing that.

Because it is personal and it is serious and I am going to say this one time and I am not going to repeat it....again....at all. So, if you are listening now, you are hearing this and if you are not listening now fine, so be it.

So, it is something personal that I have been... I'll be honest with you...I've been dreading talking about it, but I am going to talk about it now.

And here it is.... My wife Susan and I have separated. We have actually been separated for several months now. It happened back before the holidays. And I have not talked about it on the air, number one because Susan is a private person and I did not want to go on the air to use this as an opportunity to hype or to play with it.

She is a private person and this was very hard on both of us and especially on her because I am a public person. I have been divorced 3 times. I know how hard that is and it must be hard, probably much harder for her in that she has never been through this before and she is married to a public figure.

I know you'll have a lot of questions about this. So I am going to try to head some of them off at the pass by saying the following: Yes, I know I am the professor. Yes, I know I teach Leykis 101, I have always been very careful to tell you I don't teach a course on how to stay married.

I teach a course on how to get laid, so those of you who are going to call and go “who do you think you are”, well guess what dear, this has nothing to do with it. That is number one. OK?

Number two, I mean, have we worked on this? For the longest time, oh yes, Yes, but I want you to know, as much as we talk to guys and tell them to dump that bitch and all that stuff, I want to make something really clear here, OK?

My wife Susan is no bitch. She is the smartest person I have even known. She is the wittiest person I know. She and I have a lot in common and we have known each other for 10 years. We have a lot of history, and this has nothing to do with the show.

It has nothing to do with rack signing. It has nothing to do with her being quote unquote a bitch. It ain’t true, she is anything but. And I want you to know that. I am going a step further here. The reasons for it I am not going onto on the air. Why? Because I am a public person. Susan is a private person. And I am under no legal obligation to not talk about this. No one has told me.

Susan and I are completely friendly and amicable. Susan and I have seen each other many times. I have been to her place. She has her own place. She has moved into a place in Los Angeles. There is no anger, no animosity, no bitterness. And the result of that is there will be no nasty comments by me or by you about her on the air.

Because I have nothing bad to say about her at all. We have a prenuptial agreement. But as I have always said, I have been good to my word. I have been helping Susan in every possible way....financially, emotionally and I will continue to do that....and we continue to be very close friends.

And we continue to spend time talking and we see each other and we have worked on this a lot. So I just want you to know that. I have generally been honest about my life. And, I generally talk about stuff as it happens. But in this particular case, being that we broke up around the holidays...it is very emotional and I am trying to be sensitive to the fact that Susan is a private person.

And, where it is very easy for me to come on the air and talk about myself, it isn't necessarily easy for her to hear about herself on the radio. She knows I am talking about it today. She told me this week she is ready for this. I am doing it with her approval and I am only doing it now because she is ready to hear it.

She is ready for me to do it now. We have talked about this for a long time. What will it be like? What will people say? What will people think? And the last thing I want anybody to think is that there is anything negative about Susan because there is nothing. This is no dirt here. There is nothing nasty to say.

This is the only time I am going to make a statement about it. It won't be repeated, unless KLSX runs this tape, and I don't know about it, which happens from time to time. I am not going to say it again, but I wanted you to know about it and I wanted you to be prepared, because I know we will get calls.

I've told all the guys here we will get calls about this. One thing that will be off limits is attacking Susan. You want to attack me, fine, that is OK. but Susan, I am not going to attack...at all, period, because she is a good person.

And she has been a big part of my life. And frankly, she has helped me an awful lot over the years with giving me feedback about my work. And she has tolerated my work. She has tolerated the rack signing and she has been just as good as gold with all that. So, understand where I am coming from.

There is nothing nasty to be said and its already been almost four months since we split. But I was not going to do this until she was ready. She is ready now, and I think that is good and to all my friends who did not know that this happened, I apologize to all of you. But understand that this is very trying. because we are in public and people see us.

And I did not want people gossiping about it. I wanted to talk about it when we were ready, both Susan and myself. So I have very close friends who did not know this and that is the reason I didn't talk about it.

Because I wanted Susan to get to her new place...to get set up...to get over some of the emotion and some of the difficulty of a split. And I did not want her to have to deal with my talking about it on the air while it was all going on.

So we are not divorced. We are separated. That is the deal. And now there it is, I've said it. OK? So, I've gotten it out. It is four month old news. But a lot of people didn't know it and now you know it all right. Now, we have a show. We are going to do it. And that is that and that is all I have to say about that. It is wide open telephones. And here we go babe." Bumper Music into break #1 Time: 9:20
(Bart Reed has contributed to this article. He is a Sylmar based media and marketing specialist. He is currently executive director of The Transit Coalition.)