Departing Metro Morning host Andy Barrie, left, and incoming host Matt Galloway share the mic on Monday. (Dwight Friesen/CBC)A familiar voice will greet listeners of CBC Radio One's Metro Morning in Toronto starting in March, when afternoon show host Matt Galloway takes over the mic of his long-standing a.m. colleague, Andy Barrie.

Galloway will step into the role permanently beginning March 1, the CBC announced Monday morning.

Since 2004, the 39-year-old Galloway has hosted Here and Now, CBC Radio One's Toronto afternoon drive show. More recently, he added a regular stint as the main back-up host of the top-rated Metro Morning.

'It's a great honour to wake people up in the morning.... There's a lot of responsibility there.'—Matt Galloway

"It's a great honour to wake people up in the morning," Galloway said on-air Monday morning.

"You know how important it is to be the first voice that people hear," he said to Barrie. "There's a lot of responsibility there."

Susan Marjetti, managing director of CBC Toronto, described Galloway as "already a member of the Metro Morning team.

"He's been filling in for the past year when Andy is away and has helped the show maintain its number 1 standing in the community. We're delighted he's decided to make the leap to morning radio full-time," she said in a statement.

Prolific CBC credits

A familiar voice on CBC Radio for the past 10 years, Galloway has worked on a range of programs, including The Current, Sounds Like Canada, Global Village and Q.

Matt Galloway has worked on various CBC Radio shows, and has been host of Here and Now since 2004. (Dwight Friesen/CBC)The passionate soccer fan also had an early CBC gig as a roving reporter for Metro Morning during the 1998 World Cup, anchored the public broadcaster's coverage of the 2007 FIFA Under-20 World Cup of Soccer and was a part of the team reporting live from the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Previously, Galloway was a music writer for the Toronto alternative weekly NOW and hosted radio shows, including for the campus station of York University, his alma mater. After having grown up listening to CBC shows like Brave New Waves, his first connection with the CBC was as an occasional freelance producer for the acclaimed, now-defunct alternative and indie music and culture show.

Raised in Kimberley, near the resort community of Collingwood, Ont., Galloway lives in Toronto's west end with his partner and two daughters.

Having grown up listening to people like Barbara Frum on As It Happens, Galloway described his first time inside a CBC Radio studio as "an out-of-body, overwhelming experience, but incredible. The power of radio is something that you never really get tired of. It's something that you embrace and you develop over time," he recounted on Monday.

Barrie, who revealed he had Parkinson's disease in 2007, informed listeners of his impending retirement on Feb. 1, near the end of that day's show.

"All I know was [my] body was getting a very loud wake-up call of its own, and the call said: 'Fifteen years is more than anybody's held this job. A guy's got just so much stamina. You have been there and done that, and it's time to do something new,'" he said.

The CBC said Barrie would continue to be involved with the public broadcaster in a different capacity, but wasn't releasing details yet.