Spy in the House of Love

So far, the balance she has struck between playing it safe and going out on a limb has garnered Marlowe plenty of validation. The Colorado Broadcasting Association voted Cozy After Dark the best evening show in Denver, and stations from Seattle and San Francisco have tried to woo her to larger markets on the coast--not too shabby for a dyslexic who was canned from a local country station where she mangled the names in the news every morning. But for now, she's staying put and dreaming of syndication while keeping an eye out for the man of her dreams. "I've had to walk in here with my heart severed in half after breaking up two hours before coming on the air," she discloses. "And I've cried a couple of times on the air--just broken down." The irony of her current position is not lost on Marlowe, yet she believes that over time, her career has rendered her more discerning: "I've heard a lot of people compromise. Over years of doing love songs, you hear a lot of stories--and in a way, it makes me want to wait for the real creme de la creme." Her ideal mate, she purrs, would be "a man who's in this business or has a good philosophy and a good voice, so that we could be teammates."

In the meantime, Marlowe's doing fine flying solo, modernizing a format that's nearly as old as radio itself. "A lot of people thought that specialty shows like this love-song show would be the dying dinosaurs of the Nineties," she maintains. "But they've only gotten stronger and stronger, because people are wanting to reach out more.