The son of Israeli immigrants, Raviv was fluent in Hebrew. A year after joining CBS, he was assigned to the Middle East. When Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin met to negotiate an end to hostilities between the two nations, Begin was first to announce the deal -- speaking in Hebrew. Raviv was on a walkie-talkie, in those pre-cellphone days, to the CBS TV setup doing translation into the ear of Walter Cronkite, who was broadcasting the story on the CBS Television Network.
Cronkite, impressed with his help, wanted to meet and thank him. He invited Raviv to his suite at a Jerusalem hotel for a drink. "Walter made me my first martini in the presidential suite," Raviv proudly recalled.
Career moves next took him to London as "the radio guy," where he stayed for 13 years, covering a terrorist explosion near Hyde Park that killed horses parading toward Buckingham Palace for the Changing of the Guard. He helped with the Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer royal wedding coverage, and was sent to Germany in 1989 for the fall of the Berlin Wall, trying to cram into a 35-second radio spot a description of the thrill of what he was seeing along with a few words about "why it was important."
Language skills were crucial in another adventure when in 1991 there was a coup attempt in the Soviet Union. Having been taught Russian by his grandfather, Raviv hopped a plane from London to Moscow and was surprised the airport had not been closed to foreigners. He got a cab to the high-end Kempinski hotel, where the concierge summoned a limo to take him to the "seat of government." He talked his way into Boris Yeltsin's White House ("Byela Dom") by telling anyone who tried to stop him, in Russian, that he was "a friend of George Bush." Walking past crates of Molotov cocktails, he found an empty office, placed a call to the CBS Moscow bureau and was patched through to Dan Rather on the air on CBS Television.
Banking on speculation that Fidel Castro's government in Cuba would soon fall, Raviv sought and got a transfer to Miami to keep an eye on news from Latin America. While waiting, he ended up anchoring CBS network radio newscasts and was in the rotation of radio people covering the O.J. Simpson trial in Los Angeles. Then it was back to London to anchor radio coverage of the funeral of Princess Diana.
That brush with long-form anchoring was put to the test four years later when he covered the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Raviv was the radio "duty guy" at the Washington bureau on that morning and began another long-form broadcast soon after the first plane hit. But this time, "I've got no script." He relied liberally on the WCBS helicopter reporter describing the scene for listeners until cutting away for the regular 9 a.m. ET hourly newscast.
Just as that broadcast ended at 9:03 a.m., Raviv was back at the mic, watching on a TV screen as the second plane hit. "It took me a second to know" what it was. "You had to think this is an act of terrorism." He stayed in the radio anchor chair for what he termed a long-form "high wire act" — eight hours and 12 minutes.
When he reached Medicare age, Raviv stopped the daily grind and eventually returned to his beloved long-form programming as a podcaster, with "The Mossad Files" co-hosted by Yossi Melman, with whom he has co-authored six books.
The "Legends of Broadcast" programs are produced by the Club's Broadcast and Podcast Team. A plaque listing all of the honorees is mounted in the Fourth Estate room.
