In August of 1973, Brad Weiss came to Carbondale, Illinois to attend Southern Illinois University. In 1975, while an undergraduate student at SIU, he and a roommate opened a retail T-shirt store on the south end of the strip over the old Gold Mine Pizzeria and the Waterbed shop on the north end of the Strip next to Merlin’s. This would be the first Waterbed store in Southern Illinois. Brad received a degree in Psychology from SIU in 1977. From 1977 to 1979 he was enrolled in and completed the MBA curriculum at SIU. In 1979 he married SIU student Lori Weiss, who has from St. Louis. In 1979, when there was talk of a building a train station, they moved the Waterbed Shoppe from downtown Carbondale to Sweets Corner on the east side of Carbondale. In 1982 they built a free standing building down the street to relocate the Waterbed Shoppe. In 1987 they added an edition onto the store, expanded into mattresses and became Brad the Bed King. In 1992 they once again expanded their store becoming Brad the Furniture King, the area’s largest full line furniture store. Brad has served as a Chamber Ambassador and has been on the Saluki Pride committee for a number of years where he was able to get and implement many new ideas to improve both SIU and Carbondale. The best example of this would be painting the paw prints on the streets of Carbondale. With the help of George Sheffer and the Saluki Pride committee they were able to get this accomplished. Brad has lived in the Carbondale area since 1973 and in the city of Carbondale for the past 16 years along with his wife and son Brian.