Famous Oklahomans can appear just about anywhere and sometimes emerge from very unusual beginnings. Mentioning Brent Douglass or Phil Stone might not jog most people’s memories, but the simple phrase, “How big a boy are you?” should ring a bell with many Oklahomans, even members of Generation X.
If a famous name, fictional or not, has not yet come to mind, then here is another hint: Roy D. Mercer. That name should bring a bit of laughter to many people. Though fictional, Roy D. Mercer was a common name during the 1990s, back when people still listened to the radio on purpose and You-Tubewasnotaroundtomake everyone famous for falling off a porch or eating a taco.
The slapstick skits created by Brent Douglass and Phil Stone, disc jockeys at KMOD, kept the radio-listening world laughing on Tulsa, Oklahoma’s KMOD morning show. According to internet, Capitol Records began issuing Roy D. Mercer sketches on CD in 1997.
The voice of Roy D. Mercer wasperformedbyBrentDouglass in a slangy, redneckstyle drawl. The basic idea of each skit involved a crank call thatwasusuallypromptedby a friend of the person receiving the call.
A crank call is generally defined as a practical joke, which is all fun and games. However, recipients who heard from Roy D. Mercer and realized he seemed to know a little too much about them, it felt like anything but a joke.
Mercer would agitate the person to a hilarious level of hostility and continue to pour it on. At the breaking point, usually after a threat of getting beat up from one party ortheother,oldMercerwould ask, “How big a boy are you?”
In some cases, the person being pranked would hang up and sure enough, Mercer would call back. The episode generally ended with Mercer confessing and if the recipient had not already guessed, Mercerwouldrevealwhohad set up the call. What a laugh the ending was—well, most of the time, because in some cases the person would slam the phone down and refuse to answer again.
Mercer was created in 1993 and continued until Stone passed away in 2012. Douglass stated to The Tulsa World in 2020 that “when Phil passed, that was the end ofRoy.”TheWikipediaarticle goes on to say that Douglass did not think the show would be the same without him. Douglass passed away about five years later, in 2025. The two disc jockeys shared a radio career for 27 years at KMOD-FM in Tulsa.
Though the two radio stars passed away and the chance of catching a live performance on the radio is gone, the character they created remains an Oklahoma icon. As long as people have a device to listen on, his crank calls and unforgettable punchline will continue to bring laughter. Most people who were asked, “How big a boy are you?” answered with either an exact answer or simply, “Big enough.” Mercer was big enough to leave a lasting mark on Oklahoma and global radio history and that is why he deserves to be remembered as a Famous Oklahoman.