Chatting with Gary LeVox of Rascal Flatts

I have always loved Rascal Flatts. Not only do they make great music, but Gary, Jay, and I are all from Columbus, Ohio... and I gotta pull for my hometown boys!

But it goes deeper than just being from the same hometown. It is such a small world that, as I mentioned in our chat, Gary was in the high school choir with one of my best friends and one of my dad's best friends was Gary's soccer coach when Gary was a kid! I mean yeah... it is SUCH a small world!

It is so incredibly fitting that the song that may very well be the last hit song from Rascal Flatts is called "How They Remember You." I remember everything about them so fondly. I remember the excitement of hearing "Praying For Daylight" for the first time when Rascal Flatts was just starting off and came to the radio station to meet us and perform. I remember hoping that these guys from my hometown would have a hit song- even just one hit song would've been so exciting! I remember going to dinner with them at Columbus Fish Market and having so much fun and so many laughs through dinner (I swear...my abs hurt for DAYS from laughing so hard!). I remember moving to New Orleans from Columbus in the spring of 2001 and shortly thereafter I heard "I'm Moving On" for the first time. For everything I was going through at that moment in my life, it was THE perfect theme song and I remember sitting in my car having a big ol' ugly cry after hearing it. It's still one of my favorite songs to this day. I remember seeing Rascal Flatts get bigger and bigger through the years and win a ton of awards, have hit song after hit song, and I remember going to a whole lot of Rascal Flatts concerts, each show just as entertaining as the last. There are so many other great Rascal Flatts memories in between and through all of it, I remember thinking about how proud I was for these guys to be from my hometown. I just wanted to see them have one hit song, but instead, they decided to take the overachiever route and become one of the biggest acts in Country Music history! And that's how I'll remember them.

It was so great to catch up with Gary today. Here is our chat, in it's entirety.

Here are a few of our O-H-I-O pictures through the years that I mentioned in the chat. If you're a fan of the Buckeyes, you understand. O-H! :)