Never a Ham, but it was radio that got me started in electronics. One day, when I was 12, I was walking past a bookstore when I saw a book on some radio projects, starting from a simple crystal radio going up to a multi-tube superheterodyne AM radio. I bought the book and was hooked.
Not a Ham, but that did not keep me from trying to build transmitters.
I kept the power fairly low, but did have some real transmitting tubes in my inventory. Yes, closing my eyes, I can still picture my shiny 6146B tubes in my mind as yesterday. Never did much with them though. In my teenage years, I spent a lot of time reading the 1961 ARRL Handbook cover to cover. The book was already old when I bought it, but it was what I had. I did have a few more books on transistors though.
In college and in my work, with my education and career being in GNC (Guidance, Navigation, and Control), I did not do much with RF, but my interest still persisted. I did end up doing some designs in consulting work at 470 MHz and 1.9 GHz in the late 90s.
At this point, in my electronics room, I still have 2 HP microwave spectrum analyzers, 2 7000-series Tektronix scopes, 1 HP RF generator, and 2 HP microwave generators.
I have not turned on the RF equipment for a while. For a hobby in retirement, I have been doing more work around the ARM microcontrollers, interfacing analog circuits to the MPU, and writing embedded code in C.