Ronny Cox and Bob P. Cox, a carpenter who also worked at a dairy. He grew up in Portales, New Mexico. Cox met his wife Mary when she was in the fifth grade and he was in the seventh grade, and they married in 1960. Cox graduated from Eastern New Mexico University in 1963 with a double major in theater and speech correction. Mary died in 2006, 50 years to the day of their first date. Cox often talks about her during his music performances. As an actor, Cox made his debut in the acclaimed 1972 film "Deliverance." In one scene, he
Ned Beatty attended but did not graduate. In 1956, he made his stage debut at age 19, appearing in "Wilderness Road", an outdoor-historical pageant located in Berea, Kentucky. During his first ten years of theater, he worked at the Barter Theater in Abingdon, Virginia, the State Theatre of Virginia. Returning to Kentucky, he worked in the Louisville area through the mid-1960s, at the Clarksville Little Theater (Indiana) and the newly founded Actors Theater of Louisville. His time at the latter included a run as Willy Loman in "Death of a Salesman" in 1966. In 1972, Beatty made his film debut as Bobby