update to my original post. This morning, I plugged in an audio cable into the phone that is hooked up to my car stereo hoping it would play that way but it didn't work. However, when I removed the audio cable from the phone and tried bluetooth again, it worked.
not sure if this is on the BB side or slacker.....i am leaning towards the BB side but at least I found a workaround for now. I am going to assume this will work the same way if you hook up regular headphones to the phone as well..but this is just a guess until I actually try it.