You'd never recognize him, but one of Lexington's best-known public relations professionals is on a Hallmark card.

Cliff Feltham, who has been the public face of Kentucky Utilities since 1996 and was a reporter at WKYT for 16 years before that, is now on the birthday card racks of the national chain of greeting card and gift stores. The publicity for the man usually responsible for generating it himself came from his daughter, who found out about a Hallmark contest and submitted a photo of Feltham as a child playing the accordion.

"If a young accordion-playing, geeky-looking guy is what you want to send for your card, I'm willing to accommodate, I guess," Feltham said with a laugh recently. "I don't think a lot of people would look at that and know it was me."

The picture dates to the late 1950s, when Feltham, who was about 12 at the time, and his younger sister both played the accordion at the urging of their parents. Family members recently discovered the photo and distributed it on Facebook.

When Feltham's daughter, Carrie Marshall, saw a contest solicitation on Hallmark's Web site, she knew she had the perfect entry.

A Hallmark representative called two days after she submitted it.

"They all loved the picture immediately," Marshall said.

The card was one of 33 selected in Hallmark's "Birthday Your Way" contest and was one of several chosen to be available for purchase in stores and on Hallmark.com.

Inside the card is the message: "It's your birthday! Go ahead ... Play that funky music."

Winners received $250 and an additional $250 for being among those selected to be available in stores.

Feltham, 64, said his sisters already have bought the card in stores.

But don't ask Feltham to play that funky music anymore; he stopped playing accordion when he was 12.

"I just got to an age, well I got there before that, where I just wasn't really crazy about practicing on the accordion," he said, "and I just knew it wasn't going to be one of my things."

He said it did give him an appreciation of music, though, and the Hallmark contest has had an unexpected benefit.

Feltham searched online for his accordion teacher, "having no idea whether she would come up or was still alive," he said.

It turns out she is a professor emeritus in accordion at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. She is planning a reunion next year for all of her students to celebrate her 50th year as director of an annual accordion concert. Feltham said he's thinking about attending.

"It was great to have found her again after all these years," Feltham said.