Today we’d like to introduce you to Kenny Hechtman.
Hi Kenny, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Got my first guitar when I was 7 years old. Wrote my first piece of music at 9 years old. Traveled with Harry chapin to in 1975 the same year I opened my first of 5 restaurants. Married in 1981 and am blessed with a beautiful wife, two children Aaron and Sarah and three grandsons Miles, Arlo and Cobi. Retired at 70 years old and went back into music where I play around Chicago and was just in a Mario Lopez movie and a featured artist in Nashville. I was just contacted yesterday to come back to Nashville Xmas week to be featured again. Btw, i’m deaf. I haven’t heard myself sing in 40 years.
I spend a good deal of my time helping mentor young artists.
On a side note I was a Harvey’s Hero on the Steve Harvey show after pulling a mother and her child out of a burning car on the Eden’s highway in Chicago.
That’s all folks 😜
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The biggest struggle was working 70 hours a week when my children were young. My job was to support and protect my family and I had to give up years of watching my family grow up in order to do that.
Going deaf was all hereditary. I knew it was coming but I do miss the interactions.
We’ve been impressed with I was DK property and had shopping centers and owned 5 restaurants. The most well known was Ken’s Diner at n Skokie Illinois. I had it for 49 years and it’s still open but no longer mine. . , but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
All I f my restaurants were kosher. I was known all over the world. Kens diner was the third oldest original kosher restaurant in the country before I sold it.
I mentored young kids in business over the years and one of them ended up buying it and still runs it now.
We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
I write a lot of music about it. I finally woke up to the fact that when things were tough I always turned to GOD and life got beautiful but I would always turn my back on that light until I needed GOD again. Now I live in that light every moment of every day. Life is a gift I will never take for granted again.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: Kennyhmusic
- Facebook: Kenneth hechtman
- Youtube: Kenneth hechtman
- TikTok: Kenneth hechtman
