With an $800 "loan" from wife to husband, David and Jewel Abt founded Abt Radio in 1936 on that shoestring budget with three employees – including David and Jewel – in a small storefront in the Logan Square section of Chicago. Abt Electronics is now the largest, single-store appliance and consumer electronics store in the country, and was one of the early online retailing pioneers, which gave Abt a national presence.

Jölane "Jewel" Fischmann Abt was born in Korompa, Hungary, and emigrated to the U.S. with her family when she was six years old. Her family settled in Chicago, starting out in typical immigrant fashion of the time by selling vegetables from a wagon. After graduating from high school, she earned a two-year degree in accounting and then worked in the family’s grocery business. She was one of a few women to drive a car in the mid-1920s and went to Cuba by herself when she was 26 years old.

David Abt was born in 1905 in Oak Park, Illinois. He did not go to high school, but he had two important sales attributes: creative talent and a good smile. Dave worked as a salesman at the Fair Department Store on State Street in Chicago selling electronics.

The Abts and the Fischmanns were friendly and David and Jewel knew each other as teenagers. Jewel's family eventually owned a half a dozen grocery stores. Since Dave knew electronics, which at that time was crystal radios, they decided to start a company soon after they married in 1934.

They decided to name the store using their last name, calling it Abt Radio. David had taken a few courses at the Art Institute of Chicago and designed the company's lightning bolt logo, which is still used today. They had their warehouse in the family garage and borrowed Jewel's brother's truck to make deliveries.

For many years Dave worked from dawn ‘til dusk doing the various jobs needed for their business to survive and grow. Each morning before going to work, he would fill up his truck with product from his garage which doubled as the business's warehouse, and set out for the store's daily deliveries. With his foresight, David knew the right time to move the family business to larger, more modern locations.
 
Seven decades later, Abt Radio has become Abt Electronics, located in its fifth location, a 350,000 square foot facility in Glenview, Illinois, a northern suburb of Chicago, with more than 1,100 employees. Many of Abt's current customers are the grandchildren of customers who made purchases from Abt Radio in 1936.

Dave and Jewel continued to be active in the business well into their 70s. Their grandsons, Michael, Ricky, Jon and Billy, and son, Bob, now run the family business and have the same dedication that motivated Jewel and Dave.

After 72 years, Abt has survived the incursion of a host of competitors and big-box retailers, thanks to a concentration on its local roots and quality personalized service. Abt has expanded into high-end electronics and appliances, hewing to the philosophies of Jewel and Dave: "everything in-house," the reason that Abt Electronics has not only remained in business, but has exponentially grown. In 2005, the Chicago block at Wolfram and Milwaukee Avenues, where the first Abt store was located, was dedicated to and renamed “Jewel and David Abt Way.”