It's a hard life, it's a hard life and there's ups and downs.

We, I mean, we heard.

You don't strike me as a shy personality. No, absolutely. No, we would knock heads like this. In fact, people would walk out the room as I would. You've got, you know... You met a sort of really at the precipice of snow. Right, and yeah, it kept following me around. I thought, you're short of the name. The word you hear with the musicians often is an eccentric but it's very

authentic. Okay, right. But there were a lot of fun times like we would we would have I'm short of the name. The word you hear with the musician's office is an eccentric, but it's very eccentric.

It was very eccentric, rhythmic. Okay, right. But there were a lot of fun times, like we would have all kinds of things going on, especially sales. My view of him from an outside point of view, he was a true professional. He was a very much professional totally. Totally. They didn't work at home. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Wendy Dio, thank you so much for being here.

I'm so excited to talk to you about your late husband Ronnie, such an incredible musical icon. So let's start with two stories. One, you get one story, I get one story. So I'm sure you've told it many times, but take me back to the night that you met Ronnie. You're working at the rainbow as a waitress. I was, I was over here, I'd come over, I didn't have a green card yet, and I needed to work. So I was working at the rainbow, also doing some movies at the time. And so I knew Richie Blackmore and I knew his wife at the time, Babsey, from So you knew Richie from back. Oh, yeah, okay. I knew them very well actually and they invited me to they were in town And they were invited me to go to a party with a mafta was up at the Hollywood Hills and so I said okay And they had recorded the first richie blackmore rainbow album, but they had not toured yet.

Yeah.

So we went up there and Ronnie was following me around and was like, a bit short. And he wasn't, nothing disrespect, but he wasn't a young guy at that point. I mean, he wasn't in his 20s. I mean, he's about about 30 at that. 30, yeah. Yeah, I was like, so he'd lived, he'd lived some life and, Yeah, he'd been in Elf and uh, uh, uh, but Rambo was really his,

um,

was coming out as I say of, of, of, of being actually in a big bad...

Sure.

But I'm saying you met him at a, at a unique time where...

Oh yeah, right. He wasn't a big star. I was like, no.

He was like, you met him sort of just coming up and we were talking and stuff and he said, you want to go for a ride to Manorburg? I said, okay, sounds good. So we went and we talked and talked and talked and he was very interesting and really interesting person, very, very smart.

And we started chatting and stuff and then we started dating for about two weeks. Okay. And then he went on the road. Yeah. And then he called me and he said, why don't you quit your job and come and join me? I said, no, I can't. I can't quit my job, but I come for a couple of weeks. Yeah. And I went for the rest of my life. That's so beautiful. Okay, so my story. Yeah, I went to see Sabbath in 2007

Have it in hell And I went for the rest of my life. Yeah, that's so beautiful. Okay, so my story, I went to see Sabbath in 2007, heaven and hell, obviously it was the name of the two or at the time, and I went back to see Tony, my hero and my friend, and talked to Tony for 10, 15 minutes. He said, she do, and then, okay, everybody's leaving. I'm gonna go home. I'm on my way out, and I've never met your husband, and he's passing me and he looks at me and goes, hey, where are you going? So I'm just to go home. I'm on my way out and I've never met your husband and he's passing me and he looks at me and goes,

hey, where are you going?

I said, well, I'm just going home. He said, can you hang out? Do you have to go home right now? I said, no, he goes, let's go talk. And he just took me in a room, just me and him for 45 minutes. He had a glass of wine and we just talked.

And he was just amazing, as you know.

I mean, but he was so warm, generous, supportive, which is interesting. Most big musicians aren't really supportive. He was very supportive. He told me, asked me whatever you want. We talked about rainbow a lot, because I love rainbow. And I still to this day really hold that meeting because it's so rare. He was a very rare person. He always made anyone who was talking to feel like that they were the most important person at that time to him and they were. He honestly genuinely loved people. And I'm not saying this in any self-grant as he was generally interested in what I was doing, what I was thinking. Absolutely. How I was thinking of music, where I was going. Well, because it was always interested in the next generation. Very much. And even when I did the last Aussie show recently, I was talking to Lizzie Hale. Oh, Lizzie Hale, strong about her experiences with your husband. She said he was so amazing to us. He would take time and get in our camper van and want to know what we were doing and what we were. And she. So here we are, these multiple generations where your husband gave us like a form of blessing if that's a nice way to put it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Lizzie gave Lizzie. She asked him one time for a piece of advice and he said, well, let's take time with your fans because you know, you may not be remembered, but they will remember it for the rest of their life. Yeah, absolutely. So when you first heard Rainbow, I assume you heard it basically before it came out. Or what was your first impression as somebody who was a purple fan and who was a big purple fan Big purple fans great band. Yeah, and I yeah, I loved it. I loved it I saw it was great. Did you kind of get what they were after right away? Oh, yeah, absolutely It was more of a of a blues way of going and rock blues rock and Ronnie wrote actually wrote a song for me about me called rainbow eyes. Oh beautiful. Because he said my eyes changed from blue to green to hazel. I love that. So now you're on tour with Rainbow. Yes, yes, yes. Richie obviously had something to prove, right? Yeah. Because he'd left purple and kind of, I mean, all that stuff's well documented. We don't need to talk about it, but it wasn't exactly the best of terms.

You know, he kind of felt like those guys were stealing his band away. Yeah. When all of the wretches was a very intricate person, he's obviously a brilliant musician. But very difficult person. When you say, because I like to say we don't do gossip here. Yeah. I think it's fair to ask someone who knows him as a person,

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