NASCAR has a way of turning coworkers into lifelong friends. When you spend decades traveling the same circuit, calling the same races, and living the grind of the season together, those relationships run deeper than most fans ever see. That reality came into focus this week, and it hit veteran FOX broadcaster Mike Joy hard. A retirement announcement of his friend stepping away from NASCAR definitely proved to be a tearjerker.

Joy didn’t try to dress it up. His message was simple, personal, and full of respect.

“You’ve had a great career…and our sport is the better for it. I’m glad to have shared the mic with you in your early years. Congrats!.”

Mark Garrow’s career is one of the most impossible to separate from NASCAR radio itself. A fixture at Performance Racing Network for more than four decades, Garrow wore just about every hat imaginable, turn announcer, reporter, host, producer, and trusted voice fans heard race after race.

His work on PRN’s GaragePass helped shape how NASCAR was covered on radio long before podcasts and social media became the norm. Along the way he played a part as he lent his voice to nearly 10,000 daily broadcasts and earned six National Motorsports Press Association Radio Broadcaster of the Year awards and the inaugural Barney Hall Award.

The Vermont native helped build Winston Cup Today into a nationally syndicated radio show and contributed to the explosive growth of Jayski.

And the love goes both ways. Earlier in September, when Garrow announced his retirement, he couldn’t help but thank Mike Joy in his speech.

“I’ve always appreciated Mike Joy and John McMullin opening the door for me to work at MRN and the folks at Capitol Sports for allowing me to build a radio network from the ground up,” the 67-year-old said.

But as the 2025 season came to an end, the Vermont native’s time to say his final goodbyes to NASCAR had come. Reflecting on his decision to step away, Garrow summed it up in his own understated way.

“Been blessed and crazy to think I’ve done so many shows…has to be NASCAR record and who knows might be “radio” record. Proud every show was original. Racing has been a part of my life since I was literally a baby, and it will continue to be, just in a different way. Truly content,” he said.

For Mike Joy and many others across the garage, Garrow’s exit is a reminder that an era is quietly turning. Not with fireworks or farewell laps, but with gratitude, respect, and the kind of bond only NASCAR can build.

But as Garrow’s swan lake exit was underway, he revealed that him joining NASCAR was just an accident.

How Garrow accidentally became a NASCAR anchor

It is no secret that the 67-year-old veteran announcer grew up around racing all his life. And being part of NASCAR would make total sense, but that isn’t particularly what the Vermont native may have wanted.

Growing up in Vermont, he attended his first race when he was barely a year old with his father waving flags at the local short track and his mother keeping score, giving him a front-row seat to racing along the road he could talk.

“It was almost a total accident, so Claremont Speedway in Claremont, New Hampshire, hires my dad to be the flagman because he was a professional prize fighter,” he recalled while speaking to Frontstretch in October. “And he loved that because that’s what he did for a living…So I grew up around it, right? That’s what I did every Saturday night during the summer. I didn’t know anything else.”

That early exposure led to the foundation for a lifelong passion, and he eventually turned that love into a remarkable career that spanned more than four decades on the airwaves.

Whether calling races live from the track or anchoring, Garrow’s deep roots in racing helped shape not only his path but also a generation of NASCAR radio coverage.