He was going through a divorce, walked away from a golden radio job and his future was looking far from certain.

Fast forward to a beaming Wightman, 48, sitting on the couch with his partner, Nyomie Essa, 37, gushing over their baby daughter, Sienna, and he can’t believe his luck.

“If you’d said a few years ago this would be the case, there was no chance … I think I’m very shocked to be here. I never would’ve predicted this is where my life would be.”

And here he is, thriving in a life that’s given him a new family both on and off the air.

On air, Wightman is part of the KIIS 97.3FM breakfast show alongside Robin Bailey and new co-host and former Broncos player Corey Oates. Off air, he is giddy in love with Essa and is a proud father of two, with nine-month-old Sienna a sibling to his son Rafael, 5, who he shares with his ex-wife Amber Preiksa.

It’s been a long time since Wightman has felt this content. “I’m so thankful, my life is immeasurably better with her (Nyomie) in it and now I’ve got this family I’ve always wanted, I’m really happy.”

Sienna burst into the world more than a month early in June last year when Essa, a senior manager at PwC, was 35 weeks pregnant.

Essa’s waters broke two days into her maternity leave and, she says, sent her into a panic.

“I was pretty freaked out,” says Essa, with the birth scheduled for caesarean-section at 38 weeks.

“(I was thinking) I’m not ready, I don’t know how to do this, is she going to be OK, this is not the plan.”

Twelve hours later, with their favourite song – Only Love by Ben Howard – playing in the operating theatre, their newborn arrived via C-section, weighing a small but healthy 2.3kg. The moment made even more precious by finding out their baby was a girl.

“We were secretly hoping for a girl … we couldn’t believe it,” Wightman says.

“There was the stress of if she’s going to be too small to then hearing her screaming and knowing her lungs were good, it was a real relief to have her in the room with us.

“It was scary how lean she was.”

From their home in Balmoral, in Brisbane’s eastern suburbs, Wightman and Essa smile the smile of new parents, where utter exhaustion meets overwhelming love.

And as Wightman settles Sienna in his arms, that smile widens, he can’t believe she’s here.

“She didn’t come easily,” Wightman says, reflecting on the couple’s fertility journey.

“It was a bit of a miracle really.”

After more than six months of failing to conceive naturally, and Essa’s age, the couple turned to the help of IVF. They had prepared themselves there was a chance they might never be able to conceive.

“It was pretty scary at the time because you don’t know if it’s going to work,” says Essa. “Each month you don’t fall pregnant, it is disappointing when you’re trying.”

The couple know how fortunate they are to have fallen pregnant on their first IVF round, and are counting their blessings. They share adorable stories of Raf doting on his little sister between their banter, (“I have this amazing gift where I can sleep through everything,” says Wightman, then Essa quips, “amazing or annoying?”), while they play with Sienna.

Her tiny face lights up as she locks eyes with her parents. Wightman’s normally frenetic mind settles to appreciate this moment because he knows how close he came to losing it all.

In 2021, Wightman faced a nightmare period in which his four-year marriage to Preiksa ended and in a shocking exit he quit his job on Nova’s breakfast show after 15 years.

He left on messy terms with his Nova co-hosts at the time, Ash Bradnam, David “Luttsy” Lutteral and Susie O’Neill.

His son, Wightman admits, was the only beacon of hope.

“Raf was the shining light of that time and he was the motivation to go on and put on a smile,” he says.

“I often had fantasies of getting in my car and driving north and not seeing anyone.

“Obviously having Raf made that impossible because I can’t do that.

“That was a fantasy and nightmare, (thinking) I have to go and I’m going to remove myself from society.

“(I thought) I don’t have a job to go to, my family has fallen apart, I just have to go.”

They were, he says, the “worst times” of his life but it’s since given him perspective.

“I would certainly not like to be there ever again but ... I grew stronger from it,” he says.

And at a time he felt was rock bottom, he, in fact, was landing the biggest win of all. He met Essa, the woman he credits for turning his life around.

“Nyomie and I had known of each other foryears but it was when we met properly that it was the beginning of coming out of the trenches,” Wightman says.

Essa says it was a situation many would have thought twice about. She’d met Wightman, a recognisable figure in Brisbane, who was a father and at the time was going through a public divorce.

“He definitely wasn’t ready for a relationship,” recalls Essa of her first impressions.

“It was a lot at the time because of his circumstances, they weren’t ideal.

“I had been divorced for a few years and I was loving life at the time and was pretty chill but I also felt a connection I didn’t want to let go of.

“You never know what’s going to happen, I just hung in there and it came good,” Essa says, laughing. But, she admits, it did come with uncomfortable moments.

“It was really hard with drop-offs and things like that. Amber was around and that’s a weird situation to be in when you’re newly dating someone and their wife is still very much in the picture,” she says.

“It was a weird time but I love Rafa and we just got along so well, it was just easy and I’m definitely happy I stuck around and we worked through all of that.”

It was Essa who convinced Wightman to focus on his happiness after watching him struggle towards the end of his time at Nova.

“I told him it’s not worth it, as much as Nova is a great station, and I guess the money was good, for you to be so miserable to go to work there and waking up with that dread, it’s not worth it,” she says.

“You have to look after yourself and do something that’s going to make you happy.”

Three months after calling it quits on Nova, he was picked up by KIIS 97.3FM to join their Brisbane breakfast crew alongside co-hosts at the time, Terry Hansen and Robin Bailey.

In the three years since he’s been there, it’s seen change but steady growth.

Hansen left in 2023 to follow his career in comedy and theatre and Bailey and Wightman continued as a successful duo last year. But this year, the pair welcomed Oates with open arms as a new co-host.

Wightman was a fan of Oates and backed him for early radio opportunities.

“Our boss asked if I knew any footy players because we were going to do some trials for sport things and I just so happened to have seen Corey on the way back from Las Vegas (March, 2024) when we went for the NRL opening round,” Wightman recalls.

“The Broncos were on the same flight as us so he (Oates) and I chatted and he was top of mind. He hadn’t retired yet, he was still playing, so he came in and did a couple of things and he was good. Robin was the one who said: ‘I reckon Corey should be part of the show next year.’

“She was the first to mention it which is pretty cool.”

A third member wasn’t always on the cards, with Wightman saying they were rating well as a duo, but they knew Oates was a good fit.

“I don’t think it was necessarily planned but he was this perfect little addition and we didn’t want him to go anywhere else either, so (we thought) let’s get him on the show.

“Corey is bringing in another element of fun and hopefully bringing in a new audience of people who wouldn’t have thought to listen to KIIS before,” Wightman says.

Wightman’s been on radio for decades but credits Oates for providing a refreshing perspective.

“It’s nice working with someone who doesn’t really know what’s expected of him … and he doesn’t do what everyone always does so it makes for a really nice difference and it’s fun,” laughs Wightman.

“A lot of the stuff that’s old radio competitions for me, he’s really excited about them and learning so it’s bringing some good excitement to the studio.”

While there’s nothing but affection for Oates, Wightman also sings the praises of co-host and veteran presenter Bailey.

He laughs at recent headlines over their rumoured “frosty dynamic” and apparent jealousy of Oates.

“It was funny,” he smiles. “Robin sent me a text message with that headline straightaway and she was like, ‘apparently we’re frosty?’

“We have just laughed about it, I don’t know where this has come from and the other part about Corey’s popularity adding tension, I was like, what? Why? Why would that add tension? I don’t know, but we had to address it and we had a good laugh about it.

“We are definitely not frosty.”

Most weeks though Wightman delivers a headline; good, bad or jaw-dropping.

His most recent was an on-air confession of accidentally getting his five-year-old son drunk on non-alcoholic wine.

But in the radio world, headlines mean noise and noise means ratings. “Part of me hates being in the headlines but then I also know when people are talking about you, that generally translates to people listening to you on air so that’s a good thing.”

Wightman knows the stakes are high. He knows how closely their ratings are watched.

He knows how fragile radio jobs are. He knows how brutal radio stations can be.

He also knows controversial duo Kyle Sandilands and Jackie “O” Henderson are gunning for their Brisbane breakfast spot.

After Kyle and Jackie O’s top-rating Sydney show took over Melbourne last year, the duo want national domination.

Wightman is feeling the pressure.

“Kyle has made it blatantly obvious he wants to come to Brisbane and I think the only way to make sure that doesn’t happen is for us to be in No. 1 and if we are winning, they’ll leave us alone and if we’re not, we’re in danger,” he says.

“He (Kyle) was in a press interview … and said ‘make no mistake, I’m coming for Brisbane’.”

Brisbane’s current breakfast radio landscape is the most competitive in the country and with plenty of shake-ups across stations, the drive to be on top is fiercer than ever.

“We’re painfully aware of it, Robin and I, even before Corey came along, we said we know if we don’t win, it’s probably over,” Wightman says. “So we are going to do it the way we want to do it and have fun.

“We will roll the dice the way we want to roll it … we are going to back ourselves.”

Breakfast radio is notoriously volatile. Shows and hosts are frequently changed and easily replaced. It’s an industry where your performance, success and popularity are directly reflected in the ratings.

In the latest survey, released in December last year, Robin and Kip finished fourth overall with 11.03 per cent market share.

They were closely behind Nova’s Ash, Luttsy and Susie O’Neill, which recorded 11.78 per cent.

Despite the fourth position, it’s believed to have been KIIS 97.3FM’s strongest year. An achievement Wightman is proud of.

But he takes it all as it comes and is never complacent.

“I’ve always gone with the mindset, it could be over at the end of the year.

“I’ve had that mindset for 30 years now,” he says. “I’ve been doing this long enough and successfully enough now, I know that I’m going to be able to find a job somewhere and do a good job somewhere, I’m not stressed about it anymore.”

He talks of Essa’s architecture passions and his building and renovating interests as a future collaborative plan for the couple.

But for now radio remains, like it always has, the centre of Wightman’s world.

Wightman was born in Adelaide but moved to Brisbane when he was eight with his parents, Paul and Sylvia, and siblings Lisa, 50, and Luke, 44 (who now live on the Sunshine Coast.)

He went to school at Bray Park State School in north Brisbane then on to Grace Lutheran College before moving to Perth when he was 16 to finish high school.

When Wightman didn’t know what to do after school, his mum enrolled him into a three-month radio course.

At 17, he got his first radio job at a local station in Karratha in Western Australia and eventually worked his way back to Perth where he hosted the nightly top 30 countdown. With a rising profile, he moved to Sydney for the launch of Nova in 2001 before moving back to Brisbane in 2005 where he stayed on Nova’s breakfast show for 15 years.

Across his 30-year radio career, he’s among a rare group of hosts to remain on breakfast radio in Brisbane for 18 years.

“It’s (radio) all I’ve ever done,” Wightman says. “Originally I thought I’d like to transition into television, but the more I did radio, the less I wanted to do anything else.

“I love that even though we have nearly half a million listeners, radio is a one-on-one medium, like I’m just talking to one person in their car or at home.

“I don’t really like big crowds, but I do like to do a live show, share my opinion and experiences, and make people laugh, and radio still lets me do that like no other medium.”

Just as much as he loves to make people laugh, he loves to be in on the joke and throughout our conversation, bursts into a contagious laughter filled with genuine joy and warmth.

But like many radio hosts, Wightman isn’t afraid to be vulnerable, as he lives some of his best and worst moments on air.

From his shock exit from Nova, parenting fails, marital problems and, recently, his health journey where he’s successfully reached his goal of fitting into an old shirt from 12 years ago, when he was at his fittest.

But among the more emotional was his on-air breakdown at the thought of potentially missing his son’s first day of school because of his co-parenting arrangement.

Wightman is candid when it comes to sharing his personal life and the struggles that arise from shared custody.

But he’s also letting listeners see how he’s changing the way a modern family operates and looks.

On Raf’s first day of school, he picked up his son and his ex-wife from her house, and drove them to a cafe where they met Essa and Sienna.

From there, they all walked Raf to school together in a special blended family moment.

“He (Raf) was so appreciative of having everyone there,” Wightman says.

“It was so important.

“Co-parenting has been going better than I expected. It’s as good as it can be … it’s not what you plan for, but it’s certainly working out really well.”

Wightman’s become used to adapting to the things he never saw coming.

It’s how he’s discovered a happiness he never thought possible and a light amid the darkness. It’s how he will continue to face whatever is thrown at him.

And it is how – as he talks lovingly about his son, new daughter and falls more in love with Essa each day – he’s uncovered the final piece that made everything fall into place.