‘I identified with him’: WIP host Jon Ritchie fights back tears over Jason Kelce retirement

The tears are still flowing one day after Jason Kelce’s emotional retirement speech, in which he announced he was leaving the Eagles and the NFL after 13 seasons.

On 94.1 WIP Tuesday, morning show cohost Jon Ritchie struggled to keep his emotions in check discussing Kelce’s decision to walk away, a move that has impacted the former Eagles fullback turned sports talker in a way he didn’t see coming.

Ritchie said he was uncharacteristically overcome with emotion watching Kelce struggle through his 40-minute speech, where he recalled his childhood dreaming about the NFL with his brother, Travis, and spoke about meeting his wife, Kylie, following the team’s 2014 Christmas party. It took Kelce nearly a minute to get his first word out, and the entire room — and others across the Delaware Valley — sat in silence watching his final words as a player for the Eagles.

“The only other sounds in the auditorium were the clicking of photographers’ cameras and the slight sniffles of Kelce’s friends and family members,” wrote Inquirer columnist Mike Sielski.

“Before he even started talking you could tell that it was in him. He was going to struggle,” Ritchie said of Kelce’s speech, which the WIP host said left him emotional.

“I was bawling! I was bawling,” Ritchie said.

Walking into work Tuesday, longtime morning show producer Joe Weachter asked Ritchie how he was doing, which led to a rush of feelings he battled to hold back on air.

“I am laughing at myself a little bit because I can’t control [myself] now,” Ritchie said. “This is affecting me so much more than it should because he was so much more to me than most players and I identified with him, I think, in a lot of ways that I didn’t even realize until now.”

Richie wasn’t the only voice on WIP to get choked up. A caller named Brian phoned into the show Tuesday and spoke about having met Kelce in the fall with his three kids and his wife, a nurse and took her lunch hour to listen to his retirement speech live and in its entirety.

“Whoever said that phrase, ‘Never meet your heroes,’ was sure not talking about Jason Kelce, because after we met him, my admiration for him went up even more,” Brian said. “He was so kind to all of us, so kind to my kids.”

Brian said his family was watching the Eagles’ loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the playoffs in January, and everyone was in tears as the cameras lingered on Kelce crying on the sideline in what ended up being his last game.

Another WIP caller, Erica in Perkasie, told midday hosts Joe Giglio and former Eagles defender Hugh Douglas how Kelce’s workman-like approach to the game helped her push through difficult times him her own life.

“Jason’s perseverance, his positive attitude — he plays every game, he never misses a snap, he plays through the pain,” Erica said.

“I’ve sort of used that in times when I’m really struggling and I want to give up and it’s really hard,” Erica added. “I know that a lot of people in the past want to be like Mike, everyone knows that, ‘I want to be like Michael Jordan.’ But I want to be like Jason.”

Kelce cohosted WIP’s morning show once, in March 2022 when he filled in for then-host Angelo Cataldi. Even then, the rumors about whether he would retire surrounded Kelce, who noted then he would make it “abundantly clear” when it was time to walk away.

During that guest-hosting stint, Kelce spoke about everything from his relationship with Nick Sirianni and Jalen Hurts to his advice for then-Sixers star Ben Simmons. But in the wake of his retirement and the special connection he’s formed with fans, a realization Kelce had during the appearance seems to sum him up perfectly.

“I’m in the business of hope. I’m in the business of providing something that a lot of people either might not have or don’t get to actively express,” Kelce said. “For me to be able to provide that in a little bit of hope in terms of an Eagles season, the success of our teammates and our players and the city, it’s really cool. The older I get, the more I appreciate it.”