NASHVILLE, TN  [Thursday Jul.12.2007]  /WMQT.com/ -- Sometimes the best way to understand the huge success of an act is to look back at their foundation. Take Rascal Flatts, for example.

The origins of the group begin with co-founders, Gary LeVox and Jay DeMarcus, second cousins and close friends from Columbus, Ohio.

"I grew up in a very, very musical family, both my mother and father sides," says Jay DeMarcus about his musical roots. "My earliest memories are of us sitting around the living room on Friday and Saturday nights and everybody coming around to the house and picking up whatever instrument was laying around and playing music all night long. My father played music all of my life, in bars. That's what I remember him doing. My mom played music too. She was, in fact, Country Music Queen Of Ohio, 1969. She was offered a record contract with RCA at that time, but decided she wanted to raise a family and not be a country music singer."

"My story is almost exactly the same as Jay's," says Gary LeVox. "I have a very musical family, my dad and my mom. Our mothers were cousins but close as sisters. We spent a lot of weekends at Jay's house as kids, doing kid stuff and making music," he adds. "Just as Jay was over at his house playing music; I was at my grandfather's house picking and singing. We'd sing 'The Old Rugged Cross' over and over again. I would sing that until I was just blue in the face."

Growing up in Pitcher, Oklahoma, Joe Don Rooney's musical influences came first from his brother and sisters. "They were all into music when I was growing up so I went through a lot of different musical genres really," Joe Don explains. Joe Don also absorbed all of the richly varied musical influences from Tulsa, just 20 miles away from Pitcher. But he got mainline country experience in Grove, OK.

"There was a show called the Grand Lake Opry, believe it or not. Kind of like the Grand Ole Opry. It was really cool. I was nineteen working there and every month we'd have a Grand Ole Opry star from Nashville come down and sing and perform like, Porter Wagoner, Connie Smith and Merle Haggard," says Rooney.

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