Joe Feeney was born in 1931 to Irish-American parents Joe and Mary (Roney) Feeney in Grand Island, Nebraska. One of three children born to his parents (all boys), young Joe showed an interest in singing at an early age. The child began his career as a boy soprano in the St. Mary Cathedral’s choir, where his family attended church. The family were Irish Catholics.
Joe’s voice stood out among the choir for its pure excellence. He was soon noticed by people from a local TV station and put on as a guest singer on a show called Youth Opportunity Hour. Joe began singing in public more often after this, and his mom, Mary Feeney, supported him in everything he did.
After high school, Joe attended St. Benedict College in Atchison, Kansas, and the University of Nebraska. At the second university, Joe sang in several contests, and one of them got him a spot on Talent Patrol, a national radio show hosted by Arlene Francis. After graduating from the university, Joe went to work in radio. While working at the local radio station WOW in Omaha, Nebraska, he got his big break.
His station manager sent recordings of Joe singing to Lawrence Welk’s offices in Santa Monica, California. When Lawrence heard the recordings of the young man's amazing voice, he invited him right away to be a guest on his TV show. Because Joe’s voice was so excellent, that guest gig turned into a regular spot on the show in short order (he sold children’s encyclopedias in the interim, as he was married by then with a second child on the way). Lawrence was not one to let such talent get away if he could help it.
Joe was the featured Irish tenor singer on The Lawrence Welk Show from 1957 until the show ended in 1982. Joe sang many songs on the show over those decades. A few were well-loved audience favorites he would sing often on the show. Those songs included such Irish classics as Danny Boy, Sweet Leilani, Galway Bay, and Be My Love.
Joe was privileged enough to sing for five US presidents outside The Lawrence Welk Show. He also performed three times at the prestigious Carnegie Hall. Joe sang for Pope Paul VI in 1975 at the canonization ceremony for Mother Seton, the first saint to be born in America.
In his personal life, Joe married Georgia Lee Gryva for the first time, with whom he had ten children. Joe and Georgia met and married while they were still students at the University of Nebraska. Georgia was an opera singer but gave up her career to raise her ample brood of kids. One of Joe’s sons, Chris Feeney, followed in his father’s musical footsteps and became an accomplished opera singer who often sang with Joe in concerts.
Besides singing, Joe had a passion for fishing. When he wasn’t doing one of these two things, he was usually doing the other.
After decades of marriage, Joe and Georgia divorced in 1998. It seemed to be an amicable breakup, as their children reported that their parents stayed friends. How could one not be friends with someone one had shared their life with for so long? Their enduring friendship spoke to Georgia and Joe's warm and gentle personalities.
After The Lawrence Welk Show ended, Joe began dividing his time between homes in Palm Springs, California, and San Marcos, Mexico. Joe continued to tour the USA, sometimes with one or more of his children. All ten had been used to traveling with him to singing performances since they were small kids.
His eldest daughter, Kathy, even performed on stage with him at what ended up being his last public performance in November 2007 in Syracuse, NY. After he crossed to the other side in April of 2008, Kathy described Joe as a physically small guy with a warm personality and a huge voice that made him seem larger than life to her, her siblings, and probably anyone who met him.
Kathy, like her brother Chris, was also a musical child and went into rock and roll when she grew up. She even had her own band for a while. After taking a break from being a musician, she performed with Joe when she decided to get back into the game. For a while, Kathy and Joe mixed their respective genres at their performances together and even told “Irish jokes” to the crowds, which audiences seemed to love.
Joe’s son Sean also sings, but just for fun. Most of the Feeney kids are musical to some extent. With two singing parents, how could they not be? Sean was the one who introduced Joe to San Marcos, Mexico. When he was eight, Sean showed Joe a newspaper clipping about fishing there. Sean and Joe fished a lot together in California, but it wasn’t until Sean was twenty-three years old that they went on their first fishing trip to Mexico. Joe and Sean stayed there for a month the first time they went. Joe loved it in Mexico so much that he eventually purchased a second home there.
Joe passed away in Carlsbad, California, in 2008, from emphysema. Joe was a non-smoker, which made the family suspect he got emphysema from decades of second-hand smoke exposure in the many clubs and casinos in which he performed.
At the time of his crossing, Joe was survived by eight children and nine grandchildren, with his ex-wife Georgia and two of his children crossing before him (Georgia only by a couple of years). Joe is buried in the Mission San Louis Ray Cemetery in Oceanside, San Diego County, California, close to his ex-wife, Georgia.
