I have met many unforgettable people in my almost 60 years as a journalist, but Marvin and Cyndia Burak are right at the top of the list. In the 1970s, I wrote more than one article for the Philadelphia Journal about Marvin Burak, who was one of the most controversial radio hosts in Philadelphia radio history. He met his wife-to-be when she was a burlesque dancer in her native New Orleans.

Burak, whom we visited several times at his rowhome in the lower Northeast, was a curmudgeon, but he was funny, compelling, highly unconventional and extremely opinionated. He was animated to the point of being theatrical when espousing his socialist views. The Buraks had two children, Lois and Jeff, who seemed quite shy, which was not a surprise, given the fact that their bombastic father sucked all of the air out of any room.

Burak’s career as a mainstream radio talk show host interviewing celebrities, later turning more political, ended in 1969 after he was convicted on obscenity charges for running a Philadelphia studio where customers took photos of nude women. In today’s pornography-laden climate, those charges might seem rather quaint, and Burak always insisted angrily that the prosecution was purely political, a thinly disguised plan by some of his many political enemies to get him off the radio. Early in his career, he did more traditional work for WPEN-AM, where he mostly interviewed show business figures like Jimmy Durante and Martha Raye in the 1950s, but his last show was on WXUR-AM & FM, stations owned by the late, controversial evangelical preacher Carl McIntire.

I was driving on Kelly Drive one morning in January 1982 when I had to pull over onto the shoulder of the road because of the shocking news I had just heard on the car radio. Tragically, according to the announcer, Cyndia Burak had just shot her husband to death in their home. Lois, then 16, was caught in the crossfire and was hit with a bullet in the leg. Cyndia Burak later told police that Marvin had gone into an uncontrollable rage when he suspected that she was having a relationship with another man, and that she killed her husband in self-defense.

At the time I found that story very hard to believe because Marvin Burak made no secret of telling people that he and his wife were “swingers” who swapped sexual partners in their own home. (Marvin once asked us to participate, but we respectfully declined. Having lived through the 1960s, though, we were not shocked.)

Nevertheless, Cyndia Burak’s self-defense story was obviously persuasive because she was acquitted of third-degree murder in 1984 by Common Pleas Court Judge Charles L. Durham. She moved back to New Orleans, but after receiving a diagnosis of breast cancer in 2009, returned to the Philadelphia area and lived with Lois until she passed away in 2016.

“I could tell you a lot of crazy stories about my dad and what went on in that house,” Lois Burak told me at that time, “but one of the reasons I think I’m so grounded, even morally grounded, is that even though there was all this nudity and sexual talk, it was not a big deal in my house. Some people may look at that as child abuse or deviant behavior or whatever, but my parents did instill values. … Throughout my mother’s marriage to my father, she was intensely committed to his beliefs and crusades — steadfast and loyal, fighting every battle right beside him.”

Lois Burak spent 25 years as the owner of a beauty salon and day spa in the Mayfair section of the Northeast, went to broadcasting school and started her own radio show, “The LoLo Show,” in 2011 featuring interviews with some offbeat characters, as her father had done. Over 100 episodes of the show aired until she ended it in 2014.

“I was called a ‘shock jockett,’” she said in a recent phone interview. “That was the most fun I ever had in my life. I never had children, but that show was my child. It was on broadcast radio, but there was also an internet podcast version.”

In more recent years, Lois Burak has carved out a successful career in automotive marketing and consulting, although she is currently trying to persuade a director of trailers for major motion pictures to make a documentary about “The LoLo Show” and her parents’ unusual relationship.

“I have talked to other production people,” she said. “I am holding my breath. I am going through some of my father’s old home movies. I have to get them digitized. I understand my parents more every day.”

Len Lear can be reached at lenlear@chestnuthilllocal.com.