Paige Nienaber hails from a small town on the fertile prairies of Minnesota. He was born into a family that had descended from a long line of entrepreneurs and inventors. His father, when Paige was just two, designed the Nobco, which forever revolutionized kitchen cutlery. This small knife could cut through tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, moose antler, jaw bones, leg bones, just about any bone, all the while still being able to quickly transform a radish into beautiful decorative garnish for just about any meal. Granite? Engine blocks? Trout, scrod and other marine life? Deciduous trees? Even a lovely Granny Smith apple. They all bowed to the Nobco.
With his invention in hand, Jack Nienaber packed his family up and hit the road for the burgeoning business that awaited a crafty salesman at county and state fairs. Along the way Jack coined “A perfect slice every time!”, which ironically ended up on his tombstone following a botched hernia operation.
Paige and his siblings quickly became part of the family business, shilling fair goers to the tent and acting as potential customers. One evening at Trail County Fair in Mayville, North Dakota, Paige was standing amongst the bystanders, watching the demonstration and waiting his turn to deliver his line (“Sir, are you telling me that the Nobco can really be used for emergency roadside amputations?”) when an errant horseshoe from a nearby carnival game sailed into the crowd and bonked him on the head.
When Paige slowly came to in the hot August sun, his eyes locked on the booth next to his families. It was for KMAY-AM and there sat a bored DJ and a lone prize wheel. Laying there on the dusty midway, Paige experienced a near religious epiphany: “There has to be more to life then a prize wheel.”
He bade farewell to his family the next day, caught a bus to Minneapolis and enrolled at the U, quickly immersing himself in the schools Radio program. From there he went on to work at stations in Portland, Minneapolis, Charlotte and San Francisco, finally suckering renowned consultant Jerry Clifton into hiring him to promotionally consult his network of stations. He currently advises over 100 radio stations across the US, Canada, Europe and the Caribbean. In addition to that, he writes the daily Promotions/Marketing column for All Access, and the monthly stunts column for ‘Morning Mouth’. His work with Mennonite youth and unwed mothers is unprecedented and in 1995, he was voted “2nd Runner-Up for the Forest Lake Junior Businessman Of The Year.”
Unfortunately, all of this pales to the success of the Nobco which was bought by the Pentagon for military applications, elevating Nobco to Fortune 500 status and making Paige’s siblings worth an estimated $2.8 billion dollars each.
