Granny and the Boys, the house band that plays at Showtime Lounge weekly, has become the stuff of local lore.
Each Sunday night, scads of people cram into Showtime Lounge to watch an octogenarian play funky tunes on a keyboard alongside her bandmates, a group of Washingtonians about 20 years her junior.
This short video about Granny and one of her boys comes from HeartThreads, a YouTube channel “dedicated to sharing the best stories about the best of us,” via Reddit. It features an interview with Alice Donahue, also known as Granny, and Richard Lynch, the band’s drummer, who lives on top of Showtime, about their romance.
They met at the University of Maryland in 1997, a year after Donahue’s husband of 43 years had died. She was 64 and he was 44. Lynch, a bachelor, immediately felt drawn to her. More than two decades later, they’re still going strong.
“It’s like, if something happens to him, it happens to me,” Donahue says in the video, as Lynch nods in agreement. “It’s oneness. Total oneness.”
This isn’t the first time that Donahue and Lynch’s love story has made the news—WAMU and NPR have both profiled their relationship and their weekly gig.
“Those 21 years, musically, has been up and down,” says Lynch. “Relationship-wise, hasn’t been up and down. It’s been up, constantly.”
Rachel Kurzius