Martin Oliver Solis Dipasupil (DJ Martin D)

Martin Oliver Solis Dipasupil died on the morning of 27 September 2026 at the age of 56. His daughter Yey Carteciano announced the death on Facebook that Sunday, saying the family was still processing the loss and thanking those who had offered prayers and sympathy. Wake arrangements were to be shared once finalized. The cause of death was not publicly disclosed.

Tributes followed from colleagues and listeners. Fellow radio personality Laila Chikadora remembered him as more than a DJ: a friend in every home and car that his voice reached, and a pillar of Philippine radio.

Martin Oliver Solis Dipasupil was born on 23 May 1970 in San Juan, Metro Manila. He spent his early years there before his parents moved the family to Marikina in 1983. He later recalled that classmates sometimes joked that Marikina felt remote, "in the mountains," when he first moved.

He studied at Aquinas School in San Juan and at Our Lady of Perpetual Succor College (OLOPSC), graduating with the school's second high-school batch in 1987. The family first lived on F. Torres Street in Concepcion Uno, where he remembered muddy, potholed roads before later improvements, and later moved within Marikina.

From childhood he was drawn to radio. He mimicked disc jockeys and station sign-offs, and friends encouraged him to pursue broadcasting rather than his earlier ambition to enter the Philippine Military Academy and become a soldier.

Before landing at ABS-CBN, Dipasupil worked as a disc jockey and production assistant at other stations and as a salesman for a liquor company. On 1 November 1996, at 5 a.m., he made his first broadcast on DWRR 101.9 FM after telling executive Lito "LBJ" Balquiedra Jr. that he was skilled, confident and would not embarrass the station.

He stayed with the frequency through its WRR 101.9 For Life, Tambayan 101.9 and MOR 101.9 For Life eras, becoming one of its pioneering and most enduring voices. He hosted music blocks across weekdays and weekends, worked as a radio production specialist, and produced station jingles. Industry recognition included Best Music Radio Jock at the 20th KBP Golden Dove Awards. Over the years he interviewed Filipino and international artists, among them Mike Francis, Rex Smith, Air Supply and Angela Bofill.

When ABS-CBN's terrestrial radio operations ended in 2020, he remained closely identified with MOR and with the listeners who had followed him for decades.

Dipasupil married Marissa, from Floridablanca, Pampanga, in Marikina in 1992. They raised three children and moved to Barangay Fortune in 2002. He took pride in providing for his family through broadcasting work and spoke warmly of Marikina as home.

He loved new wave music, naming The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Smiths and New Order among his favourites. He once said he had stopped heavy smoking and drank cold water to protect his voice. In public comments he later discussed a stroke in 2018 and pleural effusion in 2023, and said he had become more careful about his health.

DJ Martin D's legacy rests in consistency rather than celebrity. For nearly thirty years he was a steady, warm presence on one of Metro Manila's most listened-to FM stations, winning a KBP Golden Dove for music radio and shaping the sound of WRR, Tambayan and MOR for Life.

Listeners remember the voice that kept them company in traffic and at work. Colleagues remember a pioneering MOR personality who treated board work as service: to entertain others, not himself, and to leave each programme as if it might be his last. That ethic, and the trust of a generation of Filipino radio listeners, is what he left behind.