"And now... a wedding!"
The story of Ray Clay announcing weddings, including two friends from UIC.
In the 1990s, the world knew Ray Clay through his second job: the voice of the championship Chicago Bulls.
Brian Cousins knew him through his first.
“If you know anything about Ray, he’s a super super humble person. Never talked about his second job as the voice of the Bulls. He was the director of campus recreation at UIC,” Cousins says.
Cousins met Ray Clay at UIC, starting in 1995, when he came on board as a graduate assistant. Ray was Director of Campus Recreation, a welcome presence to all staff members. At UIC, Cousins also met his wife Rebecca Furlong. When the two wed in Charleston, Illinois, in July of 1999, among their gifts was the most unique voice in sports announcing their wedding party.
“I’ve probably done close to 300 weddings,” Ray says now, but while many of those were for people he did not know, the most special ones were for people he did, like Brian and Becky.
I tracked down Brian this summer after finding his wedding announcement, and talked to him about his friendship with Ray Clay.
JACK SILVERSTEIN: How did you meet Ray?
BRIAN COUSINS: He is the Director of Campus Recreation at UIC and I got hired on as a graduate assistant in the Department of Campus Recreation in the summer of 1995. I started in August of ’95 as a grad assistant. Worked in the physical education facility over on Roosevelt Road. Back in the day we had one large shared office, and we had common office space with Ray and a couple of the other full-time staff members. That’s where I met him.
Are you and Rebecca still…
Yeah we’re still married. Getting ready to celebrate 24.
That’s wonderful! How did you and your wife meet?
We met the same way I met Ray: through UIC campus recreation. She was an undergrad here at UIC while I was studying for my grad work, and she worked for campus recreation as well. We met in September of ’96.
So after the 4th title. Whether Bulls or not, are there any key Chicago sports stories that helped you and your wife know “This one’s for real”?
Probably not Bulls-related but definitely Cubs-related. I’m not from Chicago — I’m from Virginia. I grew up in Richmond and attended Virginia Tech for my undergraduate studies and came out here for grad school and never left. When I came I was already a huge Cubs fan so I was determined to live within walking distance of Wrigley Field.
When I met Becky, I was living about four blocks from Wrigley Field and we spent a lot of time at Wrigley during our dating years and even a few years after we were married. I don’t know if I have one specific story but it was one of our faorite pasttimes — going to Wrigley. Day games were our favorite. Bleachers were our favorite place to sit. Just enjoying that experience.
Awesome. So let’s talk about the wedding. This says that 60 of your family and friends attended a Cubs-White Sox game. How many people were at the wedding?
We had about 200 guests and about 60 of us went to the game. The wedding was in Charleston. Ray was unable to attend — he had a conflict that weekend — so he did a recording. We gave him our wedding party, all the names. We had a huge wedding party. I had five groomsmen and five ushers, so I had 10 guys standing up. And then my wife had the five bridesmaids to pair up with the groomsmen, and Ray announced all of them including the flower girl and the ringbearer. And he did a recorded announcement because he wasn’t able to be there, but it sounded like he was there.
There were about 60 of us that traveled back up to Chicago. We all spent the night down in Charleston after the wedding reception and traveled back up to Chicago and attended the — I want to say it was the Sunday night game of the week at Comiskey because it gave us more time to get up here from Charleston, but yeah, we had about 60 people who went to the Cubs-White Sox game as an extended celebration of the wedding weekend. Unfortunately, Ray was not able to get with us for that either, but it was fun.
So he announced the two of you, families and the whole wedding party?
Yeah. Basically what the DJ would normally do at a wedding reception, Ray did that whole thing. He announced us, our family, parents, bridesmaids, ushers, flower girl and ringbearer. We came into the reception room as he was announcing, and he did it like a basketball game. I don’t think he announced height and weight for the girls but he did it in a way that sounded more like he was announcing the starting lineup of a basketball game. He said where we were from in his typical Ray Clay P.A. voice, which was really cool.
People were raving over it. I had a lot of people from Virginia who didn’t know who Ray Clay was but once they heard his voice they said, “Oh my God, that’s the Bulls guy!”
That’s amazing! Now one of the questions is cost, but you knew him. Did he charge you?
No he didn’t. it was his gift to us.
That’s awesome. And I assume it was all set to Sirius?
Yeah. We had the background music before he started talking. He did it all — I don’t remember what form of media we were using back then but he gave us something to give to the DJ at the wedding and he played it and it was awesome. It sounded like he was there. You never would have known that he wasn’t there other than the fact that you couldn’t see him. It was great.
Obviously it was very special to us. He’s got such an awesome voice. It would have been cool no matter what but the fact that I knew him very well and that Becky knows him pretty good as well. He was more than just a boss to me, he was a good friend. I still get together with him. We go to lunch at least once a year. We have a traditional lunch with him and two other guys who all worked together.
He hired me after my two years as a G.A. I was working for Stats, Inc. And then in 1999 he hired me full-time and I’ve been here ever since. I became the director after he retired. So our relationship has continued to grow.
But just to have him even back then in ’99 when he did our wedding, it was really special not just because it was “Ray Clay, voice of the Bulls,” but because it was “Ray Clay, a really good friend of ours.” And to see everyone else enjoy it even though they didn’t know Ray Clay personally, they knew Ray Clay from his voice just like the majority of the country. They probably couldn’t pick Ray Clay out of a crowd of three people but if he starts talking pretty much everybody knows who he is.
So it was really special to have that as part of our special day. He was bummed that he couldn’t actually be there and do it in person. But it was definitely one of the highlights of our celebration.
I was not a Bulls fan when I got here. I was a Cubs-only fan. I did kind of like the Blackhawks. But the Cubs were the only Chicago team that I had any kind of allegiance to before moving here. In fact, I did not like the Bulls at all. I grew up a Lakers fan.
But once I got here and experienced the second three-peat in the city, I was roped in big time. It was a fun time to get to Chicago — I had visited a couple times — but in terms of living here, it was an amazing time to be in the city, and especially to be around Ray.
If you know anything about Ray, he’s a super super humble person. Never talked about his second job as the voice of the Bulls. He was the Director of Campus Recreation at UIC. If you asked him about it he would be more than happy to answer questions and talk about it, but he was just a very humble person. He never used that position to his advantage, never gloated about it.
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