Twin Cities radio broadcaster Dark Star dies of heart attack

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MINNETONKA, Minn. - Twin Cities radio broadcaster Dark Star died of a heart attack yesterday. He was 66.

Dark Star, whose real name was George Chappel, was found by his friends in his Minnetonka apartment after he did not show up for work at KFAN-FM 100.3 and was unable to be reached by telephone.

Chappell, who was originally from Ohio, was in the auto resale business by trade along with his family but he also had been a horse-betting handicapper for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner newspaper back in the early 1960s. He was hired on by the St. Paul Pioneer Press to do the same for Canterbury Park in the mid-1980s when the park opened and began to appear on the radio regularly as part of a sports talk show with then Pioneer Press collegues Pat Reusse and Joe Soucheray on KSTP-AM 1500.

He became popular enough to host his own talk show late nights on WCCO-AM 830 starting in 1991 through to 2010, when WCCO bought out his contract. He then moved over to KFAN.

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