Some friendships reveal themselves in small moments. Jim Nantz had gotten onto the White House guest list by what he called some miracle, and finding Palmer seated next to him was another. That night, with Queen Elizabeth at their table, Nantz leaned in and helped Palmer answer her intriguing question.

All three were sharing the same table, and that’s when Her Majesty turned towards Palmer, asking him how many people in his lifetime he had played golf with; he could not count the same person more than once. Palmer turned to Nantz, hearing nothing. Nantz leaned in and interpreted the question for Arnie, who was wearing hearing aids in both ears and could not make out what she was saying.

Later, the queen offered a guess: a hundred thousand. Palmer shook his head and said 500,000. Then he paused, looked at the Queen, and that famous grin came across his face. This was a lighthearted moment, but it was rooted in a real and long-standing health challenge Palmer had been facing.

Palmer had been open about his hearing loss for years. In an interview, he revealed he had been wearing hearing aids for over 30 years and credited Starkey Hearing Aid founder Bill Austin for transforming his daily life. Palmer wore two hearing aids and sometimes even slept in them.

“Before I got my hearing aids, I was having extreme difficulty,” Palmer said. “Since wearing them, my life is much more enjoyable.”

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This story did not end at the White House. Two weeks later, when Jim Nantz and Palmer were together in Maryland, Arnie brought the story back up himself.

“Why don’t you ask me that question, the one the queen asked? You have never asked me that before,” Palmer said.

Nantz pushed back, telling him the math did not add up. Playing with a thousand people a year from birth would take 500 years to reach five hundred thousand, and Jack Nicklaus could only count once. Palmer laughed and conceded the point.

That same story, shared between two friends, was the one Jim Nantz chose to tell at Palmer’s eulogy in 2016. Of all the things he could have said that day, he reached for a memory where Arnie was grinning at a queen and getting his math checked by his friend.

Nantz’s friendship with Palmer was built on small, meaningful moments, a theme that also defines his iconic broadcast opening. While the Palmer story reveals his character in a public setting, the origin of his famous catchphrase is a deeply personal story about his father.

Jim Nantz’s ‘Hello, Friends’ was never about broadcasting

For decades, Jim Nantz has opened nearly every major broadcast with the same two words: “Hello, friends.”

The phrase has become one of the most recognizable greetings in sports television, but the story behind it has nothing to do with building a signature catchphrase. In 2002, Nantz was by his father’s bedside as he battled Alzheimer’s. Before heading to Minnesota for the PGA Championship, he made his dad a quiet promise.

“I’m going to look into that camera, and I’m going to say, ‘Hello, friends,’ and that’s for you, Dad, ’cause you have nothing but friends,” Nantz said on the Vanity Index podcast.

The moment was meant to be private, a fleeting signal between a son and his father watching from Houston. Nantz assumed it would be a one-time thing. A colleague at CBS encouraged him to repeat it the next day, and what started as a personal message gradually became his trademark across golf, basketball, and football.

Nantz Jr. passed away in 2008 after a 13-year fight with Alzheimer’s, but the phrase never lost its meaning.

“I say hello, friends, and I think of my dad watching down on me, and it relaxes me,” the 66-year-old said.

Every broadcast, the words still serve the same purpose they did that first day in Minnesota.