Chip and Vicki Emery: A music loving partnership makes a deep investment in MPR

Jun 3, 2025

When Chip Emery was young,  living in Maine, his family owned a stand up Zenith radio. “I spent hours listening to Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. We loved to listen.”

His love of listening grew through high school where he earned his “one and only union card as the timpanist in the Portland, Maine Orchestra.” The Naval Academy and a gunboat tour in Vietnam, then a PhD in Industrial Engineering at Stanford “more or less terminated my performing career.”

Before Chip left for Vietnam he met Vicki, “the love of my life.” Vicki was also an avid listener.  She shared, “In the 1940s and 50s we didn’t have television. I lived with my grandmother and great grandmother in Charlevoix, Michigan. Every Saturday night we’d turn on the radio. I would get a piece of linoleum out of the closet, put my tap shoes on, and dance for them.” Vicki’s music listing is anchored in 60’s rock and roll.

After leaving the Navy, Chip shifted to building a high tech career. Honeywell took the family to Industrial controls in Philadelphia, then to Florida as the General Manager of the Space System Division which made the main engine controller for the Space Shuttle.  Next, it was on to Minneapolis where he ran Honeywell’s Military Avionic Systems Group. “About a week after arriving here, the Berlin Wall fell. So overnight we went from having a big growing business to a big collapsing business.  Once the wall went down conventional wisdom shifted away from military expenditures.” 

Through these moves the car radio was always tuned to public radio. Yet what they listened to in the car was always controlled by the driver.

For years they listened to A Prairie Home Companion. Whether preparing to go out or cooking together in the kitchen, many times they would stop and just listen to Garrison Keillor. “Sometimes it was funny. Sometimes we'd end up crying because he could spin a tail so well.”

Once they settled in Minneapolis, the Emery’s started donating to MPR. First they teamed up with neighbors to repair an MPR local transmitter and then to bring Performance Today from NPR to MPR “That’s how Fred Child came to the Twin Cities. MPR knew how to franchise and the program grew to be on 100s of stations across the country,” said Chip.

Later, Brian Newhouse (then head of classical music at MPR) asked Chip to consider sponsoring the Performance Today Young Artists program. That was another step up in their support of MPR. Chip suggested these artists would not only play in a school, but also in a private home –preferably in theirs. Chip shared, “Vicki would put out a spread, I would rearrange the furniture and Fred would host. He liked to interview musicians in front of the small group of people who came to the house. When they finished playing and talking, they just hung out with us. We did that five or six times a year for maybe 6-8 years until Vicki said enough!”

The recent changes in Washington D.C. have led to a greater commitment by Chip and Vicki. They met with Jean Taylor over lunch to ask what they could do. The idea was to show support for the crucial importance of public media.

Chip said, “Ever since it was founded every Republican president has zeroed public media out. But listeners have protested and the Congress would retain funding. Given the continuing trend of zeroing out government funding for socially responsible commitments, Vicki and I are giving a two part gift to reinforce the strength of MPR: $75,000 for the Young Artist Series and $250,000 to the campaign. So it totals $325,000 between now and 2027. We use a donor advised fund to direct our gifts.”

Chip and Vicki will celebrate their 54th wedding anniversary in June. “I have MPR’s Classical on all day in my home office. She will come into the room where I am and just hit a different button and say,  Nope, we're finished with classical for the moment. We're listening to something else!”