When Dixon's show ended not long after his death in 1974, Bonnie Lou semi-retired from show business to Monfort Heights, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati, with her second husband, Milton J. Okum (b. 1926), a furniture store owner and magician. They wed in Las Vegas, Nevada on January 2, 1966. Capitalizing on her public appeal, the Okums appeared together in TV commercials for the store. For a couple of years in the mid-1980s, she hosted a weekend country music show on WPFB in Middletown, Ohio. A 2013 look back at the station's history deemed Bonnie Lou "the most beloved DJ that blessed the [station's airwaves..." Due to her many years on radio and TV and performing in public, she was a household name in Cincinnati and across the country among viewers of the programs on which she was a regular performer. In her 80s, she still performed in public occasionally.