Guess who’s back, back again?

Less than a year after Joe Cicero departed McHenry County-based Star 105.5 radio’s morning show – breaking up the 15-year-plus partnership with co-host Tina Bree – the duo are set to return on Nov. 3.

“We were on a break,” Cicero laughed, adding that station general manager Kathleen Cahill started talking to them about maybe coming back in late August as the station was poised for a sale.

“When the new owner came over, Connoisseur Media, that was the opening of the door for the Joe and Tina reboot,” Cicero said.

“They are all about live and local,” Tina Bree said of the new ownership.

The last year has been a whirlwind for the former co-hosts after Cicero left to run marketing for the McHenry Outdoor Theater in December.

He continued to host the Saturday Special show for the station while running expanded events and marketing for the drive-in theater. Cicero will continue in that role, too, as well as being on the board of two area nonprofit boards.

“I am approaching it as a split shift,” Cicero said. “I don’t have scheduled hours at the Outdoor.”

Bree continued the station’s morning show until February, then moved to the afternoon, 2-to-7-p.m. shift.

Then, in May, she opened Hello Darling Books & Beyond at the McHenry Riverwalk Shoppes. Open Friday, Saturday and Sunday through the Christmas shopping season, Bree – with husband Justin Lawrence – have applied to run the shop for one more season as they search for a permanent location in McHenry.

“I learned how to hustle again. I felt like I was back in my 20s” while running the romance bookstore and doing the weekday radio show, Bree said.

They both learned to sleep in too. The radio show began at 5 a.m. and for the past 11 months, neither needed to be out the door by 4:30 a.m. The new show will start at 6 a.m. to allow them a little more sleep.

What hasn’t changed is their friendship. Cicero calls Bree’s husband his best friend, and Bree calls Cicero “Kramer” because of his tendency to show up at their house, unannounced, at about dinnertime.

“He has so much energy, and we love him ... but he’s Kramer” referring to the character from the TV show “Seinfeld.”

“I am not offended by that,” Cicero said as the two talked about their return while sitting in Crystal Lake’s Around the Clock Restaurant. Meeting a reporter there was a decision based on their – and the station’s – commitment to local content, Cicero said.

“We made our career working with local businesses. That is so rewarding, to be able to see people” in the community, he said.

That is the mindset of new owners Connoisseur Media too, said station general manager Cahill. The Connecticut-based company owns 216 stations across 47 markets in 24 states, according to its website. It took over the station Sept. 4.

“The core mission of this new company ... aligns with what Star 105.5 is. Rooted in the community with local radio and local content,” Cahill said. “This is a heightened commitment to the local approach to radio.”

Cicero and Bree fully expect to continue the on-location community promotional events they did as part of the morning show gig. Other than being an hour shorter, little will change from what they did for a decade and a half.

“We are not reinventing the wheel” and will continue to talk about what’s going on the communities the station reaches, Cicero said. “We both live in the area and we will be talking about what everybody is talking about, from conditions out on the road to the big stories in Lake and McHenry counties.”

They will get back to what made them popular in the market, Bree said. “It is the show that we did when we started, making connections in the community.”