Ask American Profile

Ray Price, Robert Redford, Gene Rayburn

I would like to know if Ray Price is still touring and recording. I really love to hear him sing.
—Bertie D., Tennessee

Price, 77, is considered one of the greatest country singers ever and is known for hits such as Crazy Arms, Danny Boy and For The Good Times. However, he’s not content to rest on his laurels. He recently released two new CDs, a solo record called Time and a duet album with Willie Nelson titled Run That By Me One More Time. “Willie and I have been friends for so long that it was like sitting down with a brother and feeling comfortable in whatever you say or do,” he says of the recording sessions. Price will perform nearly 100 shows this year, most to sell-out crowds. “I always wanted to be the older people’s singer anyway,” he says. “I wasn’t going for the younger people. When things got so bad in the record industry that only the younger people would get to play, the older people were ignored. We’ve gone back to doing straight old country-type songs.” He may begin work on a new album soon. “I’m an older person but I’m still real active and entertainment is my life,” he says. “I want to continue singing for the older people, the old songs they liked so much.” Price, who has one son, lives on a horse farm in Mount Pleasant, Texas (pop. 13,965), with Janie Mae, his wife of 35 years. When he’s not singing, he’s raising thoroughbred horses. “I love all horses, but the thoroughbred to me is a great creature.”

Someone told me Robert Redford refuses to salute the American flag. He is my all-American hero. Please tell me this isn’t true.
—Ruth B., California

Absolutely false. “He loves this country tremendously and that’s why he’s working so hard to protect the environment for future generations of Americans,” a spokesman for Redford says. Redford, 66, known for his acting talents in films such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, also is a successful director who won an Academy Award in 1981 for his direction of Ordinary People and received a 1994 nomination as director of The Quiz Show. More recent projects include An Unfinished Life, a family drama co-starring Jennifer Lopez scheduled for release next year, and The Clearing, a kidnapping thriller with Helen Mirren and Willem Dafoe that will be out later this year. Redford, a divorced father of four who lives in Utah, also founded the Sundance Institute, which holds an annual film festival that has become one of the world’s most influential showcases for new movies.

I would like to know about Gene Rayburn, the host of Match Game. Let me know if he is alive and if he is married and has children.
— Leona W., Florida

Sadly, Gene Rayburn passed away in 1999 at the age of 81. His wife, Helen, died three years before he did and they have one daughter, Lynne. You can still catch reruns of his most popular game show, The Match Game, on the Game Show Network. Rayburn was born in Christopher, Ill., (pop. 2,836) and moved to New York City to pursue a career as an opera singer. When that didn’t work out, he attended an announcer’s school, and after serving in World War II, got a job as a page for NBC. Eventually he worked his way up in television, getting his first big break when he was hired to be the announcer for The Tonight Show with Steve Allen. He hosted a number of game shows, but The Match Game, which began in 1962 and—aside from a three-year break—ran for nearly 20 years, was the one that stuck. And here’s an interesting fact: the ultra-slim, long microphone that Rayburn used on the show—he invented it.

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