For years, Fred Craddock and Steven Darsey entertained audiences in North Georgia with their folksy wit and songs.

Their "Winged for the Heart" shows - including one this past Saturday in Fannin County - feature the pair on stage, with Craddock weaving homespun tales and Darsey strumming his guitar and singing folk tunes.

The performances caught the ear and eye of Sally Sears, a reporter with WSB-TV in Atlanta, who says she has been a longtime fan of the duo.

"When I listened to this event that's been going on for 10 years now, I thought more people need to hear this than just the folks who can get into the performance hall," she said.

Sears has worked with Clarkston resident Wade Medlock, who has a radio background, to produce what has become a segment on "Community Life," a program put together and aired semimonthly by WPPR-FM, a Georgia Public Broadcasting station at Piedmont College in Demorest. Sears and Medlock said they shopped the idea around to several radio stations before finding the fit at WPPR.

Her work began with getting permission from Craddock and Darsey to pull some of the recordings of past events.

"We tried at first to make a TV show out of them, but you know how they say some people just have a face for radio," Sears said. "Well, these guys have the voice for radio."

She said she believes the segment "works beautifully on the radio because you get to reinvent visually what you're hearing."

Sears, who dubs herself the segment's reporter, provides the narrative for the segment, filling in the rest with the pair's performances that are punctuated by audience laughter.

In an e-mail she sent describing the program, Sears described Craddock, a preacher emeritus and theology professor, as "one of the world's great story-telling preachers."

"Only this is the stuff he tells on Saturday night, not on Sunday morning," she added.

And Darsey's "singing is the music from the hills, the original tunes that haunt our memories ... and make us laugh."

Medlock produces the show in his home.

"He's a steel picker himself, and he loves bluegrass. And he is a man of great religious faith," Sears said of Darsey. "But they don't necessarily go together. In this case, they do. ... It's his ear for which story will work, how to create the arc that makes the show so juicy."

Darsey, who holds a doctorate in musical arts in choral conducting from the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, said he "was greatly honored by their interest."

"Piedmont College is doing creative things with their radio station," he said.

Darsey serves as president of Meridian Herald, an Atlanta organization that promotes "the interaction of worship, music and culture, bridging communities and traditions of the past and present."

He said he has known Craddock for 22 years, from their days as faculty with the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta.

"We got to be great friends and enjoyed doing worship together there," Darsey said.

After Craddock retired, "I approached him with the idea of us putting on a folk program, where he didn't have to preach. He could just tell stories," he said.

"He's a preacher and I'm a church musician, but this gives us a chance to explore the secular world. ... We've had a great time doing it, and I am looking forward to doing it for years to come."

So does Sears, who likens the annual events to a Blue Ridge version of "A Prairie Home Companion," the folksy radio variety show that originates from the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota.

"I think they put these two worlds together beautifully - the songs and the stories from Appalachia," she said.