KROQ's Kevin and Bean To Air Their Final Show Thursday

LOS ANGELES, CA — One of Los Angeles' longest-running morning radio shows will come to an end Thursday morning when Gene "Bean" Baxter co-host of KROQ-FM's Kevin and Bean signs off for the last time.

It will be the end of a 30 year run that a generation of Angelenos listed to. Earlier this year, Baxter announced his plans to quit the show and move back to his native Great Britain. Bean has co-hosted the show with Kevin Ryder since it began in January 1990.

“The most surprising thing about the hundreds of emails that I’ve gotten in the last few weeks is how many people have been listening for all 30 years," Baxter told the Los Angeles Times. "It’s extremely humbling and extremely gratifying. And it makes leaving hard — hard for them and hard for me to give up that relationship.”

The Kevin and Bean show has been KROQ's flagship program for decades, launching the careers of up and coming comics while landing interviews with the hottest names in music including U2, Beyoncé, Radiohead and Billie Eilish.

Baxter recalled how a pair of untried morning show hosts got their shot and had to claw from the bottom of the pack before eventually becoming the city's top-rated morning show for a time.

"We were coming to a radio station that had Richard Blade, Jed the Fish and Rodney on the ROQ, people who were already legends in Southern California. We were the new guys," he told the Times. "We were out-of-towners and out of our depth. We had never done a morning show, together or separately. So there was a very steep learning curve. The first few years were difficult."

But Baxter still hasn't lost his love for radio.

Baxter said he is not retiring and wants to continue broadcasting in Britain, "even though I have this funny accent. I just hope someone will give me a chance."

"So, it's time for my wife, Donna, and me to move on to new adventures on a new continent," Baxter said when he announced his retirement. "We are moving back to my homeland, England. I am a British citizen ... and have spent many vacations there over the years and it always feels like home."

Baxter has been doing his part of the broadcast remotely -- first from his Seattle home and recently from New Orleans -- with Los Angeles-based Ryder since the late 1990s.

In a Twitter post, Ryder said, "Bean has wanted to move to England for a LONG time and I truly think this will make him happy. That makes me happy."

City News Service and Patch Staffer Paige Austin contributed to this report.