WOKY's studios and offices, which became the home of all iHeart Milwaukee stations in 2000 after a building expansion, are on West Howard Avenue in Greenfield.
In the wake of WEXT's success, the Bartell family applied for full-time broadcast operations, and the result was a move down the dial to AM 920 in September 1950 and a new call sign, WOKY.
WOKY initially aired a full-service variety format similar to WEXT's, including popular music shows and programs oriented toward housewives and children.
Over time, contemporary music became the primary component of WOKY's schedule, with disc jockeys choosing the songs they played based on the Billboard and Cash Box best-seller charts and on local record sales.
Popular disc jockeys on WOKY, during the Top 40 years, included Bob White, "Mad Man" Michaels, "Lucky" Logan, Mitch Michael, Sam Hale, Ron Riley (later with WLS Chicago), Bob Barry, Carl Como, Paul Christy, Michael Lee Scott, Jim Brown, Pat McKay, Jack McCoy, Ronnie Knight, Johnny Dark, Craig Roberts, Jack Lee, Robb Edwards, Gary Price, Gene Johnson, Jon "Rock 'n Roll" Anthony, Big Ron O'Brien, Barney Pip (later with WCFL Chicago) and Bob Collins (later with Chicago's full-service giant WGN).
WOKY is also noteworthy for being the first station in Milwaukee to broadcast traffic reports from a helicopter, courtesy of air personality Art Zander and his feature "The Safer Route".
[6] As FM stations became the choice for radio listeners looking for contemporary music, WOKY shifted to an adult standards format in early-1982.
Starting in 1993, the station was known for pioneering marathons of Christmas music beginning on Thanksgiving Day and continuing through the holiday season.
On January 2, 2007, after concluding its Christmas holiday programming, WOKY came back with a new approach: an oldies format emphasizing hit songs from the 1960s and 1970s.
NASCAR moved to WOKY from ESPN Radio outlet WAUK, which days before announced the removal of all auto racing programming to focus on solely on traditional sports.
[10] (In reality the branding launched on January 5 during the station's broadcasts of Wild Card Weekend games from Dial Global.)
On December 2, 2013, Learfield Sports and the University of Wisconsin–Madison announced that WOKY would become the Milwaukee station for Wisconsin Badgers broadcasts, replacing longtime affiliate WTMJ, effectively making the team exclusive to iHeartMedia in the two largest cities in Wisconsin, with iHeart's WIBA-AM-FM in Madison acting as the flagship stations of the Badgers.