For most of that time, Alison Rosen had been his right hand "news girl" on the Adam Carolla Show.
She even went on to have the second most successful podcast on his network, Alison Rosen Is Your New Best Friend.
Everything seemed to be going well, both professionally and personally, when Carolla made a clean break over their New Year's vacation.
Catching her by surprise was one thing.
Surprising the listeners was another.
Carolla likes to describe his podcast network as a pirate ship, allowing him the freedom to reach his audience without the tyranny of network interference. He made it clear that he and his pirate crew weren't going to answer to The Man.
As a listener who used ACS as a morning show, it felt like waking up to the same family every morning for four years.
That was also why it was so jarring to wake up on the first Monday of the year to the news that daddy fired mommy.
"Alison Rosen will not be part of the show in 2015."
Carolla praised her as professional and funny, but said she wasn't a good fit.
That was that.
Except that it wasn't.
Wasn't a good fit?
For four years?
Carolla had every right to think of the listeners as his fans, but took for granted that many of them tuned in each weekday for the show's dynamic- not just him.
He also took for granted what a personal medium podcasting is, lulling listeners into one-sided friendships and conversations they don't realize they're not a part of.
Like thousands of other listeners, I quickly switched over to Alison Rosen Is Your New Best Friend, which dropped the same morning.
While keeping things brief and professional, she did say the firing via email came as a total surprise, validating my own surprise.
She quickly moved on to a prerecorded interview with ACS regular Jo Koy.
Doing so left unanswered questions and built up a bit of suspense about the upcoming "Thursday Gang" episode of ARIYNBF, which usually features a number of Carolla studio employees.
A backlash to Rosen's firing exploded across the Twittersphere in a way that Carolla had not expected.
Thousands of listeners tweeted that they were done with ACS and they'd never buy the app or watch his movie or click through his Amazon banner ever again.
Several colorful things were said about Carolla himself, as well.
His wife's tweets that he had the right to do what was good for "company morale" only raised eyebrows.
He was used to people hating him and his brand, but these were fans.
His fans, he thought.
Meanwhile, ARIYNBF was having it's best week ever. The Thursday gang podcasted out of Rosen's dining room, apparently with Carolla permission, if not his blessing.
The show rose to the top of the iTunes charts (as nebulous an entity as they are), even above Carolla.
Between that and the hate train rolling through his Twitter feed, he felt he had to do something.
Carolla's solution was to take almost an hour of the next Monday's show to detail why he fired Rosen.
(He also forbid the Thursday gang from appearing on "the competition.")
As a listener, I was glad to get some real answers.
I also knew that to do such a thing meant he felt desperate, and my bullshit detector was turned to 10.
For over 50 minutes he described a pattern of unsupportive and unengaged behavior that sounded different than any impression I'd gotten over four years.Rosen herself wasn't able to comment on the diatribe 'til a month later.
Most of it sounded like trumped up padding, but two incidents did seem to stick out.
In these incidents, Carolla described his feelings as hurt and rejected, and said he behaved accordingly.
Any one that listens to ACS knows about Carolla's signature anger management issues. (one of his more popular segments is called "What Can't Adam Complain About?")
He wasn't hurt, he was pissed.
He was pissed enough that he was going to stew silently about it most of the year until he decided to throw her out of the building.
So what were the two incidents?
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