Known for chart-topping hits like “How Your Love Makes Me Feel” and “Meet in the Middle,” the country music band Diamond Rio formed in Nashville in 1982. Marty Roe, the band’s current lead vocalist, was born on this day in 1960 in Lebanon, Ohio.
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How Marty Roe, Diamond Rio Proved Critics Wrong
Like many in Nashville, Roe’s upbringing was a musical one, performing in his high school jazz band and playing the trumpet, guitar, and the mandolin in a stage band. Prior to joining Diamond Rio, he toured with the Christian band Windsong and impersonated country singer Larry Gatlin at Opryland.
Roe and his bandmates struggled to find their footing in Nashville, told by executives that they were “just too big to succeed” in the genre, according to a July 2023 interview with Taste of Country.
Their break came in 1991 when Diamond Rio finally inked a contract with Arista Nashville. They debuted on country radio with “Meet in the Middle,” off their self-titled freshman album. The song made Diamond Rio the first country music band to top the charts with their first single.
And just like that, the floodgates opened for other large country music groups, proving Alabama had indeed not been a fluke, as one executive told Roe.
“Once we broke with ‘Meet In the Middle’ it was amazing,” he recalled. “Every label — you saw Little Texas, Lonestar — I mean, here they come. Those folks — good friends of ours — got a chance, maybe, because we proved this actually can work.”
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Diamond Rio Has Won Four CMA AWards
Over the next decade, Diamond Rio would send four more songs to the top of the chart: “How Your Love Makes Me Feel” (1997), “One More Day” (2001), “Beautiful Mess” (2002), and “I Believe” (2003). The four-time Country Music Association Group of the Year winners have released nine studio albums—three of which attained Platinum certification—and earned two trophies from the Academy of Country Music Awards, along with a Grammy Award for Best Southern, Country or Bluegrass Gospel Album. Diamond Rio earned the latter for 2009’s The Reason.
In addition to an immensely successful music career, Marty Roe is active in various charities alongside wife Robin, including Mid-Western Children’s Home, American Lung Association, Big Brothers Big Sisters and Family Dynamics.
Featured image by Amy E. Price/Getty Images
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