Mar 17, 2006  |  By: GREG MARZULLO  | COMMENTS     

Gay couple Dave Kolesar and Patrick Wojahn made headlines when they joined a lawsuit seeking full marriage rights in Maryland. Now, they are writing their own headlines after launching an internet-based radio show with some familiar call letters.

The pair has been together for five years and had a commitment ceremony last June. On July 7, 2004, the pair joined eight other couples and sued the state of Maryland for the right to marry. On Jan. 20, 2006 Circuit Court Judge Brooke M. Murdock ruled that banning same-sex marriage violated the state’s constitution. The state has appealed the ruling, which was stayed pending resolution of the appeal.

In the meantime, Kolesar, 28, and Wojahn, 30, are moving on with their lives, which includes a weekly variety internet radio show. The appropriately named WGAY (found at www.wgay.fm) airs Fridays from 9 p.m. until 1 a.m. The show is available for download throughout the remainder of the week.

"There’s a group of maybe up to a dozen of my friends," says Kolesar, 28. "We all go into my basement on a Friday night and put on a free-form show."

Topics range from politics to sex, and when the conversation starts to die down, they spin some tunes for their listeners.

"[Kolesar] lets me take over as DJ for the last hour of every show," says Wojahn, a 30-year-old lawyer with University Legal Services, a non-profit company providing legal assistance for people with disabilities.

"I tend a little more toward electronic music, indie rock, hip hop," Wojahn says. The show’s music varies from pop to polkas, and the couple’s music collection of almost 4,000 albums provides an immense library of choices.

"[Friends] knew [our] relationship was serious not when we moved in together, but when we combined our record collections," Kolesar says only half-jokingly.

LONG-TIME DISTRICT residents will remember snickering at commercials for WGAY-—-a standard FM radio station specializing in easy listening music found at 99.5 on the dial-—-through the late ’90s.

Stationed at the World Building on Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring, Md., the original station played instrumental music, popular songs and even Broadway show tunes. In 1999, the station retreated to 1260 AM, when WJMO, an oldies station, took over its frequency.

In 2001, WGAY went off the air when a business talk station took over its AM spot. The former FM home of WGAY is now known as "Hot 99.5," a pop music station.

The letters’ trademark expired in January, and Kolesar, along with friend and show contributor Sam Brown, filed paperwork with the patent office for ownership of the station letters’ trademark.

"Nobody else has applied for it," says Kolesar. "There isn’t any reason we shouldn’t get it."

The show is a culmination of Kolesar’s long-held fascination with radio. At 13, he was using home radio kits to broadcast a show that listeners within only a few blocks of his house could hear. He went on to start his high school station in Hyattsville, Md., and he became the chief engineer of Catholic University’s radio station when he was a student there. Although he started an internet show in 1999, he re-launched it as WGAY in January, and his listener base has increased exponentially.

"In the past week, we’ve gotten 400 hits on our website," Kolesar says.

The advent of internet radio has allowed him and his friends to create a show out of his home without the typically high overhead costs.

"We maintain a studio that is essentially the same as a studio of a broadcast radio station," says Sam Brown, 41, a regular participant at WGAY. "Instead of feeding [the show to] a big transmitter and a tower, we’re feeding [it to] a computer upstairs via a high speed connection."

Aside from cheaper technology, owning call letters on the actual radio dial is an astronomical expense.

"Commercial FM stations have gone for $50 million," says Brown. "Small AM stations are still over $1 million. The only way that an average person can get on the air in an urban area these days is internet radio."

KOLESAR’S STATION PLAYS other programming throughout the week. Tuesdays are reserved for oldies music, and Wednesdays are re-runs of shows from Georgetown University’s ’60s and ’70s radio station WGTB.

In 1960, the FCC granted the university one of the first FM licenses in the city, and soon, the station was blaring out innocuous music, matching the school’s squeaky-clean Jesuit faculty ...