We have already seen a number of WFAN hosts be temporarily put off the air with the regular weekday hosts carrying the full load. To that end, we maybe should have anticipated more cutbacks at WFAN and other stations. However, when you thought of those people who could or would go, you really never thought that would include John Minko.

Minko, or the Mink Man, has been there since the beginning. Actually, he was there before the beginning doing work for the station prior to its official debut. Through that time, we have come to hear him on almost every WFAN show, and he became somewhat of a personality.

Through and through, he was a professional with his 20/20 updates, and he put up with the ribbing, mostly good-natured, from everyone across the spectrum and timeline from Mike & The Mad Dog to Craig Carton. Through all of it, he outlasted them all. Still, you knew the end was coming from him at some point.

It was less than a year ago, he told Evan Roberts he planned to retire over the course of the next year. Minko, himself, noted July 1 as a potential date as that would mark the 33rd year of the radio station. He did not see himself starting a 34th year. Still, his retirement now comes as a bit of a surprise.

On that note, he told Neil Best of Newsday he took the buyout now to help save other WFAN staffers, saying, “I thought that if I took it now, which was the right thing to do, if that prevented somebody else from getting fired, then I thanked Rick.”

As noted in Best’s Newsday article, Rick is an old WFAN executive name Rick Cummings who saved Minko’s job in the early days of the station. Upon saving his job, Cummings said the best way for Minko to repay his kindness is to one day pay it forward, which Minko just did.

Minko’s final shift begins at 11:00 A.M. (the time this article is being published), and it will run through 5:00 P.M. To that end, he has already finished his final shift with Mike Francesa as well as a whole other host of WFAN personalities. That leaves him and Joe Beningo as the old guard with Beningo being the one who gets to say good-bye on his own show.

We will all get to say good-bye in our own way from afar listening on the radio. That’s all we can do, and honestly, even in these strange times, it was all we could ever do, so in that, there is a bit of normalcy in this. Still, nothing will ever feel normal about listening to WFAN without Minko doing the updates.

The good news is he was already planning for this day, and he is getting the recognition he has long deserved. Congratulations on a great career Minko and for being the standard bearer for how it is done.