KFAN's Paul Allen on Jeff Dubay, Brett Favre, the Vikings: This week's cover

Photo: Nick Vlcek

Paul Allen will soon be in perpetual motion

​KFAN's Paul Allen cruised into the Twin Cities in1995 to call races at Canterbury Park, and has risen to become one of our media market's top broadcasters through a quirky combination of confidence, exuberance, and a vernacular that, if not all his own, was at least new to Minnesotans.

He's stuck in the shoulder-season doldrums right now. But come football season, he will be a man in perpetual motion, racing between four or five different jobs. He's at the radio station by 7 a.m. for his 9-to-noon show, tapes spots for his advertising partners afterward, and often spends afternoons at the Vikings practice facility to record interviews with players and coaches for a weeknight KFAN show.

Paul Nolan tagged along for the ride recently, and brings back a profile of the broadcaster in his prime time for this week's cover story.

"The 'having fun' part is finally starting to happen," Allen tells Nolan. "I was driving down [Highway] 169 from Vikings workouts to Canterbury the other night, and I called my wife and said, 'You know, I've done play-by-play for eight years, radio for 12, and have called close to 20,000 horse races, and it still hits me how awesome my life is.'"