Wild 95.5's Jason Pennington gives childhood friend a kidney - Palm Beach Post

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Bruce R. Bennett/ Palm Beach Post

Jim Romano and WLDI ("Wild 95.5") FM radio personality Jason Pennington ( right, of Palm Beach Gardens) pose for a photo Tuesday at Clear Channel Radio. Next week, Jason is giving a kidney to Jim. "We've been friends since we were 12," he said. "I kind of knew I'd be a match."

By Emily J. Minor

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Back when they were kids - say, in the sixth grade, when they were cute and rowdy and a bit of a handful - neither of them could have guessed it would come to this.

The two of them, grown men with real-life worries and joys, on separate operating tables, one giving, one receiving.

"I know he'd do the same for me," says Jason Pennington, 34.

"It's just been kind of a back-and-forth thing our whole lives," says Jim Romano, also 34. "We've always been there to lift each other up."

And if that means Pennington giving up a kidney so that Romano doesn't die, well ... game on.

Since they were 12 and held behind on a school trip - one because his mother was over-protective, the other because he'd had a little run-in with trouble - Pennington and Romano have been the kind of friends who were always a bit tender-hearted about each other. At least, it seems that way in retrospect.

Teammates on the baseball field since their Little League days, Pennington likes to paint Romano as the A-list kid who could have had anyone, but chose him.

"He was very popular," says Pennington. "All the chicks loved him."

When they were playing ball at Palm Beach Gardens High and Pennington was going through a rough spell, Romano would stick behind after the final out to be there for his buddy.

"He knew I was pretty heartbroken because I wasn't playing," Pennington remembers. "He would just stay there with me and help me feel better."

Romano? He was always hitting "one of his signature line drives" to win the game.

A lovable guy

In the years that followed, in what only now seems like quick succession, the friends nurtured their friendship with both careful reverence and casual contentment. Girlfriends and a wedding. (Pennington was the best man.) Band gigs and baseball road trips. And the heartbreaking loss of a beloved parent; Romano, his father, Carmine, and Pennington, his mother, Kay.

"We've been there for each other for a long time now," says Romano, of West Palm Beach, who works as an independent video producer.

So Thursday, first thing - before most of us have even had our first cup of coffee - Jason Pennington and Jim Romano will check into Jackson Memorial Hospital, where the organ transplant team will remove one of Pennington's kidneys and carefully put it to work inside Romano, who has the same kidney disease that killed his father.

Turns out, these two are a perfect match.

But they already knew that.

If you're an early riser who listens to radio in the morning, the name Jason Pennington might ring a bell. He's the funny man on the Kevin, Virginia and Jason Show, radio station Wild 95.5's top rated drive-time morning show.

He's also the guy who showed up for his audition eight years ago wearing (only) his catcher's gear and a snug pair of tighty-whiteys.

But it's radio, so it was OK.

"Jason is the kind of guy, he really is, who would give you anything," says Kevin Rolston, the host who fell in love with Pennington's oddball shtick pretty much right away ­- as soon as he realized the guy wasn't a crazed intruder.

"He's not a material person," Rolston says. "He's just a lovable guy."

That lovable guy figures it was the spring of 2010 when he realized something was seriously wrong with his buddy. Romano had driven ahead on business when Pennington drove to Universal Studios with Romano's family - Jim's wife, Kristie, and their daughter, Angelina, now 6. Kristie had a heart-to-heart with Pennington about her husband's health.

Diagnosed several years before with polycystic kidney disease, a disorder that creates multiple cysts on the kidneys and makes them too large to function properly, Romano was losing kidney function. The very disease had claimed Carmine Romano's life at age 51.

Pennington, who still lives in Palm Beach Gardens, said he knew "instantly and without a doubt that I wanted to help him."

An honor

But donating an organ is a tricky thing, and the medical team first wanted to test immediate family members, who often make the best match.