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| 1929 births | |
| owens, bonnie | |
| 2006 deaths | |
| american country singers | |
| people from oklahoma city, oklahoma | |
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Bonnie Owens ( October 1 , 1929 – April 24 , 2006 ) was an American Country Music singer. She was moderately successful both as a solo artist and together with her former husbands, Buck Owens and Merle Haggard . Born Bonnie Campbell in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma , to a pair of sharecroppers—one of eight children—she first met Buck Owens in the mid-1940s, when he had a daily, 15-minute local radio show. Once Owens learned that Bonnie could sing, he helped her get a job with him on another radio show in 1947. The following January, Buck and Bonnie were married, but the union was short-lived; by 1951, after giving birth to two sons, Buddy (who used Buddy Alan in the 1970s) and Michael, Bonnie's marriage to Buck was over. Since neither could afford a divorce, they stayed legally married, but separated, for several years. Bonnie and the two boys left for Bakersfield, California , where she worked as a cocktail waitress. It was during this period that Bonnie met Fuzzy Owen and guitarist Roy Nichols , who would be instrumental in shaping Haggard's career. By the late 1950s, Bonnie was recording on the Mar-Vel label with Owen and his band, the Sun Valley Playboys. She cut a well-received duet album with Owen (her sometime boyfriend) on Tally Records, which later would be rereleased on Capitol Records as ''Just Between the Two of Us''. In 1961, Owens saw Haggard singing for the first time at a Lefty Frizzell concert; by 1964, Fuzzy was managing Haggard, and suggested the duo rerecord the title track. Taking Fuzzy's advice paid off when the song briefly hit the top of the country charts, replaced a short time later by Haggard's breakthrough single, "(My Friends are Gonna Be) Strangers". In 1965, Haggard signed with Capitol Records, married Bonnie, and signed the Strangers (including his new bride) with a booking agency owned in part by Buck Owens (who had since moved to Bakersfield). Bonnie's marriage to Haggard lasted until 1978, but the two already had separated in 1975. Eventually, Bonnie resumed touring with the Strangers in the late 1970s, and later was married for the final time to Fred McMillen. Though Owens, still using her original married name, released a half-dozen albums and numerous singles with Capitol Records in the mid- to late- 1960s, she remained satisfied singing backup as a member of the Strangers. The McMillens moved to Missouri in the 1980s, but Bonnie continued touring with Haggard and his band, taking a break from 1991 to 1994, then continuing her road work until the late 1990s. She moved back to Bakersfield a short time later, following her diagnosis with Alzheimer's Disease . Owens was 76 years old when she died in a hospice in Bakersfield on April 24 , 2006 , less than one month after the death of her first husband, Buck.1 ALBUMS
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