I have an uncle who called in Ghost to Ghost in 98 or 99. He was on hold for 3 hours lol. The way it worked was if you didn’t get on the line, your phone would just go dead. If your call got on the “list line”, you would just hear “due to the many calls, your call will be put in first sequence.” or something similar.
I wasn’t on hold that long, maybe 30 minutes, but I was mortified when Art Bell got to my call and said, “Turn your radio off”. I almost hung up.lol
How could I forget to do that? I was glad I got to talk to him before he retired.