Even before they were married in 1956, Dick and Lois Meis made beautiful music together as the duet Lois Lane. Sweethearts since seventh grade, they sang on their own radio show while they were still in high school in Fort Morgan. During their professional and personal career together, they’ve expanded their repertoire but kept their eyes on each other. Claire Martin, The Denver Post
Q: What songs did you sing on your radio show?
Lois: Sometimes we did honky-tonk, and sometimes we did current songs that we now consider old country — Hank Williams, Patsy Cline. That’s all you heard back then. Purina Chow sponsored our show.
Q: How long was your show?
Lois: Fifteen minutes, five days a week. We taped ’em five days at a time.
Q: And after you married, you went to Nashville?
Lois: Yes. We spent four years in Nashville. I did some work with Kitty Wells. She was big at the time. Dick was working with different bands, some with Loretta Lynn. I worked with packaged shows, where there’d be Johnny Cash and the Carter sisters in a show, and we’d open for them and do our part before they went on.
Q: What did you think of Elvis Presley?
Lois: I heard him when a friend in high school brought us a tape of his, and I thought it was awful. It was so different. At the time he was just so new, and so different from what we heard growing up.
Q: And you came back to Colorado in 1966.
Lois: Yes. The reason we moved back from Nashville wasn’t that we didn’t, so to speak, “make it.” We were successful. But we had two little boys, and I was about to be put on another label and have to go on the road. I’m not a traveler, never have been. Back then, you didn’t have too many buses. You had to travel in station wagons and that type of thing. They’d make me sit on the hump in the front seat, and usually the upright bass was sticking in my neck. I was never comfortable being away from my family. I felt like I was neglecting my sons. So we decided to come on back to Denver. I don’t think we would have stayed together all these years if we hadn’t.
Q: Do you ever have to go on stage after you’ve had a fight?
Lois: Oh, yeah. You just, I don’t know, kinda cover it up and do what we have to do. I’ve learned to stay away when Dick’s setting up. Basically, we have a wonderful marriage. We get along really well for two musicians.
