Beloved Maine Late Night Host Fulfills Dream of Getting David Letterman as His Final Guest (Exclusive)

When he was a child growing up in Old Town, Maine, Dan Cashman was a huge fan of late-night talk shows – especially “Late Night with David Letterman,” which aired on NBC from 1982-1993, and then “Late Show with David Letterman,” on CBS from 1993-2015.

“He was silly and smart, and I think that made me respect him as a young kid,” Cashman, now a 47-year-old father of two, says of the legendary talk-show host. “I grew up wanting to do what he did.”

That enthusiasm never waned for the Bangor-based public relations director — and for the past 15 years, he has been the host of “The Nite Show with Danny Cashman,” a weekly talk show modeled largely after Letterman’s shows, complete with a studio audience, a live seven-piece band, an opening monologue, and celebrity guests (both regional and national ranging from Patrick Dempsey to Ed Asner).

The show, which airs in Maine’s top-three TV markets on Saturday nights, is currently, according to Cashman, the only locally produced late night talk show in the country — but with his familial commitments, day-job demands and a busy not-for-profit, it’s now coming to an end.

He announced last year that the final show would tape in spring 2025. And even though Cashman tells PEOPLE he knew that he “knew it was time,” it was bittersweet.

At the time of the announcement, he said his coup de grace would be for Letterman to be a guest on his talk show in its final year.

So Cashman reached out to a colleague who connected him with Letterman’s team and wrote what he called “the most honest letter I could.” In the message, he expressed his admiration for Letterman and looked for guidance on how to end a show “that I truly love, since he is someone who has gone through the same situation.”

In March, he got confirmation that Letterman had agreed to be the final guest on “The Nite Show with Danny Cashman.” The episode will air on May 10.

“Not only do I have butterflies, but I have a stomach full of cocoons with thousands of butterflies just waiting to hatch,” Cashman said before the April 23 taping, where the 470 audience members (only a handful of whom knew of Letterman’s presence in advance) were in for quite a surprise.

“When I introduced him, and before he came out from backstage to the band playing the theme song from his talk show, the electricity was amazing … one of the greatest things I’ve ever experienced,” Cashman says. “It was very emotional – and not just for me. I saw one person in the audience who nearly fell back in his seat and was slack-jawed the entire time.”

Cashman says he didn’t meet Letterman before their on-camera encounter — but when the TV legend walked onstage, shook his hand, thanked Cashman for inviting him and sat down for the interview, it was “every pipe dream I ever had come true.”

“He was every bit as engaging and complimentary and funny and silly and smart and serious as he was when I saw him on television for 33 years-plus – and that was both on camera and off,” he says of Letterman, who wore a navy blue suit for the show and later switched into a gifted green Husson Eagles sweatshirt.

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Cashman says that Letterman joked about how to correctly pronounce “Bangor” (“BANG-gor, with an emphasis on the second syllable) shared the story of how the city got its name (“which I didn’t even know,” the Maine native admits), and talked about how impressed he was that the local late night talk show was an on-air success for so many years.

“He was so very kind and it has really taken out some of the sting of closing the show,” Cashman says. “It’s like he gave me a pat on the back and a very, very loud ‘atta boy.’ To get that from someone whom I’ve idolized since I began watching him in 1987 … it’s beyond anything I ever thought could happen.”