Alabama Women's Hall of Fame
A female pioneer in American broadcasting, Mary Olive Enslen Tinder began her career as a book critic and lecturer after graduating from the Alabama College for Women, as well as schools in South Dakota, Indiana, and New York. In 1939, she began her first on-air position with Indianapolis radio station WIRE. During WWII, Tinder hosted a radio program selling bonds with celebrity guests and later piloted a test program to help rehabilitate returning soldiers in army hospitals. Tinder made history when she became the first woman to radio broadcast the Indianapolis 500.
Tinder moved to television in 1951. By 1957, “The Olive Enslen-Tinder Show” aired three days a week. As one of the first TV talk show hosts, and the first woman to have her own show on the Eastern Seaboard, she mastered the celebrity talk show format and interviewed stars including Tony Curtis, Burl Ives, Joan Crawford, Alfred Hitchcock, Marlon Brando, Carol Lombard, Merv Griffin, and Louis Armstrong.
Tinder died in her hometown of Wetumpka in 1981.
Other Inductees
Alabama Women's Hall of Fame