"I don't think people were meant to get up at 3:30 in the morning," says Melissa Forman about the time she rises each day to be on the radio from 5 to 9 a.m. in Chicago.

"It's something you never really get used to," she admits of waking up so early.

But if lack of sleep is the price she has to pay for being perhaps the only major market female disc jockey to have her own morning radio show in the country, Forman will take it.

"Every day I pinch myself that I get to wake up, have fun, interact with amazing people," she says.  "And especially [that] I get to do that in Chicago, where I'm from.  It's an incredible feeling."

Forman grew up in a northern suburb of Chicago where she never dreamed she'd have her own radio show someday.  "I always thought I wanted to be a TV reporter, but there was always that goofy side," she says.  "I do voices."

In the hyper-competitive world of morning radio, filled with "shock jocks" and "morning zoos," Forman uses a novel approach to rise above her testosterone-laden competition: Be yourself.

"I think you win when you connect with people," she says.  "By being real, that's the connection."

That genuineness comes through on the air when Forman connect with listeners through talk, jokes, games, music and celebrity interviews.

"The stars who are ready to just loosen up and have fun with you are really the ones who come off sounding the best," Forman says.

She has interviewed cast members of "The Brady Bunch" and "Happy Days," singer-songwriters James Taylor and Billy Joel, actor Keanu Reeves and entertainer Donny Osmond, whom she calls "a fun guy, very easy to interview."  She's had Ed McMahon on more than once.  "Ed McMahon is always a blast," Forman says.

But her most memorable guest was a monkey.  Forman read an article in the newspaper about a monkey who was turning 30, and, being an animal lover, she invited the monkey and his handler on the air.  In the studio the handler gave the monkey some chocolate, which ended up all over the place by the time they left.

"It may not have been the best radio," Forman says, "but it was my favorite time on the radio."

But Forman usually doesn't monkey around in the studio; she spends a lot of time preparing for the show, although says most of what happens on the air is spontaneous.  When she first started out in radio as a morning host in Champaign, the thought of being on the air without a script terrified her.

"No, I don't get nervous anymore.  It kind of becomes second nature," she says of being on the radio.  "Really, you feel like you're talking to your friends and people you know."

And although most days her goal is to put a smile on listeners' faces, she also ready to tailor her show to what the audience wants.  "On the day of the Sept. 11 attacks, people didn't want to hear funny things," Forman remembers.  "We opened up the phones and let people express themselves."

It took Forman years to learn how to master the studio equipment she operates for the show, which includes cuing up music and sound effects.  "It's unusual because in a lot of [radio] formats you have the guy running the equipment and the woman kind of plays a second role." she says.  "And in our show, people are surprised that I'm the one running the equipment."

Forman likes to do funny voices on the air, and her first big break in radio came from her ability to mimic Bart Simpson, the mischievous and underachieving character on the hit animated television show, "The Simpsons."

When Forman was a University of Illinois senior majoring in broadcast journalism, she interned at a Champaign television station and several local radio stations, including WLRW-FM, where she did the news for the morning show with John McKeegan and Maura Myles.  Forman also worked for the campus radio station, WPGU. She did her Bart Simpson voice for a commercial on WPGU, and when McKeegan and Myles heard it, they asked her to become part of the show.  Soon, Forman was filling in regularly for the pair.

Just as she was graduating McKeegan and Myles left and Forman was offered the job of hosting her own show. "I was terrified. I didn't know what I would say for four hours," she says.

Forman was later joined by a co-host who did an impeccable Homer Simpson to her Bart, and the show took off. Together they would do stunts for charity, once sitting on a teeter-totter for 24 hours to raise money to build Prairie Park in Urbana.

"Every time I go back to Champaign, I stop and visit the park and think about how many people came together to make it happen," she says.  "That's the great part about radio."

Forman left Champaign for Cincinnati in 1997, where she hosted her own show before returning to Chicago in 1999.  She worked at another Chicago station before joining WLIT in April 2001.  She is quick to credit the largely male crews she has worked with for her success.  "I've never been a banner-carrying feminist person," Forman says, "but it is nice to have so many people around me who believe in me.

"It's nice to step out of the stereotype that the woman has to be giggly side person."

PERSONAL
NAME: Melissa Forman
TITLE: Morning Princess
OCCUPATION: D.J.
HAIR: Yes
EYES: Green
BIRTHDATE: 4/7/70
SEX: F
HEIGHT: 5'4"
WEIGHT: light

FAVORITES
COLOR: Red
FOOD: Chinese
TV SHOW: Friends
MOVIE: Vacation
ACTOR/ACTRESS: Steve Martin/Julia Roberts
MUSIC PERFORMER: Foo Fighters, Billy Joel

TALENTS
ACTING: Some character voices
OTHER SKILLS: Gymnastics, Jogging, Rollerblade