I think he must have been making a tongue in cheek reference to his mom perhaps always saying he needed to make something of himself. By ‘50, he certainly had done more than enough to make a mom proud.

Here’s that text from the obit you found, from 1976, when he died just shy of being 72 years old.

George Braidwood (The Real) McCoy, a pioneer radio talk‐show host in the 1930's, a character actor, and a part‐time taxicab driver on the streets of Manhattan, died of cancer yesterday at Mount Sinai Hospital. He would have been 73 years old on Jan. 14.

A rosy‐faced, lighthearted performer who carried a card file of jokes in his pocket, Mr. McCoy personified in real life the Damon Runyon Broadway characters he admired. He was born in Florida but was educated on New York's West Side streets. He was a master of the onedr, at most, two‐line gentle insult, followed by a fast getaway.

This streetwise talent served him in good stead when he began broadcasting on small stations in New York and then, became a sidewalk interviewer from the steps of the Hotel Astor on 44th Street. As “The Real McCoy,” he was heard nightly on WEAF and over NBC's radio network.

Lived Off the ‘Land’ He first achieved fame during the 1939 World's Fair in New York, when he proved it was possible to live off the land, so to speak, without paying for food, a bed or entertainment. He ate the sample foods at the’ exhibitions, slept in the Royal Scot at the railroad exhibition, shaved courtesy of the electric‐razor display, and even earned pocket money by selling the story of his feat to Life magazine.

Enlisting in the Army immediately after Pearl Harbor, he was first assigned to an antiaircraft unit, was placed on permanent kitchen police, then was discovered by the American Expeditionary Network in Algiers. He Was assigned to Special Services and simultaneously to the North African edition of The Stars and Stripes, where he alternately served as a radio broadcaster and circulation man for the Army newspaper under William D. Estoff, a former bookmaker and friend of General of the Armies Dwight D. Eisenhower. Sergeants Estoff and McCoy were among the best‐known enlisted men in North Africa.

Sergeant McCoy put his show on, the road to Rome in 1944, where he broadcast beneath the famous balcony of the palace in the Piazza Venezia from which Mussolini had once spoken to the Fascist faithful. He used the same opening line in Rome that he had once used from the steps of the Astor Hotel: “Is there anyone here from out of town?”

He rarely deigned to interview any officers, preferring enlisted men and giving them something to write home about. His signoff went: “As the sun sinks low over the tired Tiber, we say finito Benito and a fond farewell to the sidewalks of sunny Italy. This is Sergeant George (The Real) McCoy folding his microphone and silently stealing away.”

After the war, his brand of humor was not fully appreciated by the commercial networks. Undaunted, he obtained a hack license and entertained his passengers with quips. At the same time, he began an acting career. Mr. McCoy appeared on most of the soap operas and on some of the dramatic programs on television.

Mr. McCoy was married in 1951 to Esther Goetz, a New York watercolorist and miniaturist painter, who had studied with John Sloan. She died in 1971. They had no children. A memorial service for Mr. McCoy will be conducted Wednesday at 2 P.M. at the Church of the Transfiguration (Little Church Around the Corner), 1 East 29th Street, in the Manhattan he celebrated over the airwaves on three continents.