"I don't think people were meant to get up at 3:30 in the morning," says Melissa Forman about the time she rises each day to be on the radio from 5 to 9 a.m. in Chicago.

"It's something you never really get used to," she admits of waking up so early.

But if lack of sleep is the price she has to pay for being perhaps the only major market female disc jockey to have her own morning radio show in the country, Forman will take it.

"Every day I pinch myself that I get to wake up, have fun, interact with amazing people," she says.  "And especially [that] I get to do that in Chicago, where I'm from.  It's an incredible feeling."

Forman grew up in a northern suburb of Chicago where she never dreamed she'd have her own radio show someday.  "I always thought I wanted to be a TV reporter, but there was always that goofy side," she says.  "I do voices."

In the hyper-competitive world of morning radio, filled with "shock jocks" and "morning zoos," Forman uses a novel approach to rise above her testosterone-laden competition: Be yourself.

"I think you win when you connect with people," she says.  "By being real, that's the connection."

That genuineness comes through on the air when Forman connect with listeners through talk, jokes, games, music and celebrity interviews.

"The stars who are ready to just loosen up and have fun with you are really the ones who come off sounding the best," Forman says.

She has interviewed cast members of "The Brady Bunch" and "Happy Days," singer-songwriters James Taylor and Billy Joel, actor Keanu Reeves and entertainer Donny Osmond, whom she calls "a fun guy, very easy to interview."  She's had Ed McMahon on more than once.  "Ed McMahon is always a blast," Forman says.

But her most memorable guest was a monkey.  Forman read an article in the newspaper about a monkey who was turning 30, and, being an animal lover, she invited the monkey and his handler on the air.  In the studio the handler gave the monkey some chocolate, which ended up all over the place by the time they left.

"It may not have been the best radio," Forman says, "but it was my favorite time on the radio."

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