Page 124 - Been There… Done That!

Gary Graham
Well, that was all great, but they didn’t tell me they were bringing her then-boyfriend, Jim. After meeting her I felt a strong attraction and I realized that she was different than any girls I’d known previously, but also quite a bit younger than me. My thoughts were, what was I thinking – I don’t stand a chance here. However, just as all thoughts of her were beginning to vanish, I saw Debbie a week or two later without her boyfriend and we danced and talked until the wee hours of the morning. Having been used to being around show business women, I found Debbie just entirely different than any women I’d known in the past, with no interest in the limelight or show business. She graduated college with a 4.0 GPA one week before we were married. I used to joke that I married my education. Here we are, 40 years and two remarkable boys later, so I guess it worked.
To some, it may sound crazy, but it happens. Even though I stopped going on the road, I never really left the music business. I had been hired by the Missouri State Fair and Wrangler Jeans to produce shows in Sedalia for the fair and the entire United States for the Wrangler Corporation. I’d had some success writing songs and I continue to write. Looking back, I have learned to appreciate that time in my life. One song I wrote had the line “I thought the world was mine,” but I didn’t really think about those things until I reached the point where I could sit back and reflect on them.
What I think is vital in my decision to leave was that I had lasted so long. Not too many can do that in the most robust business in the world and consider themselves a success and be unfazed by fleeting popularity and money and other spoils of the industry. Through my experiences, I learned there are people that, it doesn’t matter what
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