The lawrence welk show cast
Welk asked me to become a regular on the series. I did the one show as a guest star, and then Mr. “My intention was to get on the 'Welk Show' and just do one song for my grandmother, who loved the program and watched it every Saturday night. “I had my own solo career, playing Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe and nightclubs around the country before I joined the show, and I was doing very well,” recalls English, who, as the teenage lead singer of Ralna and the Ad-Libs, once beat fellow northwest Texas native Buddy Holly in a battle of the bands. Welk and he said, ‘OK, this might work.’ I went from soloist to being one half of ‘Guy & Ralna.’”Įnglish, with Hovis at her side, would remain with the "Welk Show" until it went out of production in 1982, even though she had initially envisioned a much shorter run. They had never had a married couple on the show and they didn’t want one. By Christmas, I had approached everyone from the producer and the director, to the music director, the assistant producer and the assistant director, about bringing Guy on to the show as my singing partner. He was a singer, too, with his own career, and I wanted us to work together. “Guy and I were married on January 25, 1969, and I started on the 'Welk Show' in April 1969. Their original television pairing might never have happened, however, had then new bride English not been persistent. “We’ve also kept a good personal friendship over the years, because of our daughter.” It is partly the blend of our voices and also that we’ve always harmonized very easily together,” said Hovis, 73, by telephone from his home last week. “We’ve enjoyed a pretty good relationship for almost 50 years now.
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Like English, Hovis says he was not surprised when their professional re-pairing went smoothly.
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Senator and onetime Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, a friend from their college days at Ole Miss.įollowing their 1984 divorce, Hovis and English – whose 1975 recording of “How Great Thou Art” earned a Dove Award nomination from the Gospel Music Association – performed together only occasionally before reuniting for a 2001 PBS-TV special, “Lawrence Welk: Milestones and Memories,” which featured members of the “Musical Family” from the 1955-1982 run of the television series hosted by accordionist and band leader Welk. From 1991 to 2007, Hovis served as state director for former U.S.
These days, the Mississippi-born Hovis makes his home just outside Jackson, the state’s capital, with current wife Sis. English and Hovis have a daughter, Julie, 37. “We can do love songs on stage, have dinner together after the show, and then go back to our other lives.”įor Texas native English, who has not remarried, that means a home in Scottsdale where she has lived since 1997. We are still so in tune together onstage that it is uncanny,” explained English, 72, by telephone recently from her home in Arizona. “Guy and I just couldn’t make it as husband and wife, but when we sing together it still really works. Guy Hovis and Ralna English – the only married couple ever featured together on TV’s “The Lawrence Welk Show” – may not have found lasting harmony at home, but three decades after their 15-year marriage ended in divorce, the singing duo known as “Guy & Ralna” continue to harmonize onstage, as they will when they play the Reagle Music Theatre in Waltham on April 26.