The family lived in the Logan Fontenelle Housing Projects while Hughes' father attended college.
She found her love for music at a very young age, while repeatedly each night lying in bed listening to Everly Brothers and The Platters.
[8] Before radio, in the mid-1960s, Hughes worked for an African American newspaper called the Omaha Star.
[9] Hughes began her career in 1969 at KOWH in Omaha, but left for Washington, D.C., after she was offered a job as an administrative assistant with Tony Brown at the School of Communications at Howard University.
[citation needed] During her marriage with Dewey Hughes in 1979, they set out to purchase a radio station.
Successfully finding a lender after being denied thirty-two times by banks,[10] in 1980 Hughes and then-husband Dewey founded Radio One, subsequently buying AM radio station WOL 1450 in Washington, D.C.[11] After the previous employees had destroyed the facility,[12] she faced financial difficulties and subsequently lost her home and moved with her young son to live at the station.
Her fortunes began to change when she revamped the R&B station to a 24-hour talk radio format with the theme, "Information is Power."
Hughes interviews prominent personalities, usually in the entertainment industry, for the network's talk program TV One on One.
[citation needed] Both Cathy Hughes and her son, Alfred Liggins have been named Entrepreneur of the Year by the company Ernst & Young.
[citation needed] Hughes and Urban One wanted to open a casino in Richmond, Virginia, but were defeated by voters in 2021.
Hughes chose not to accept the will of the voters, and instead pushed a racially charged "do-over" casino campaign[clarification needed] in 2023.
On November 3, 2023, tapes of Hughes calling casino opponents racial slurs on a local radio show were released.
She, on the other hand, was focused and knew she could pay back the 1 million dollars they were able to borrow from their "angel" lender.