24 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM {punchline} keen interest in real estate. Ryan obtained a real estate license and earned a reputation in Nashville circles. He was juggling both business and creative pursuits when he got a Facebook message from Shannon, asking to connect. As Ryan describes their coffee shop meeting, “I walked in, Shannon’s sitting there and that was it.” He knew they would get married. While Shannon was a few dates away from reaching the same conclusion, both recognized that they had serious musical chemistry. “I believed in our musical connection so much that I just didn’t want both things to fall apart because we were trying to do both,” she shares. Ryan invited her to perform a song with his band at the Roxy Theatre that weekend in Los Angeles. “When she came out to do one song with me, no one in the audience wanted to see the band anymore,” Ryan laughs. “They just wanted that: the duo.” In third grade, Shannon Haley made her most vivid feelings known in songs she wrote on piano and guitar. As a teen, she developed a big, operatic voice— and a morning ritual of singing along to the country radio station 95.3 KRTY before school. She ended her days rehearsing rigorously with Los Altos High School’s elite choir, the Main Street Singers. In perfect harmony, just one town over in Palo Alto, Ryan Michaels absorbed songwriting inspiration from his dad, a pedal steel guitarist. Growing up in his family’s Sunnyvale music store where his parents worked, music and soccer were the only two things that mattered to him. During his teen years, he flunked out of one local high school after another, until Ryan got to Mid-Peninsula High. His guidance counselor, Heidi Scheissler, took notice of the solo trips he was making to Nashville. She submitted his songs to be graded as English projects, which enabled him to graduate early and win a full-ride soccer scholarship to Nashville’s Belmont University, a school known for its music business program. Meanwhile, Shannon took a fullride scholarship as an opera major at UCLA. Throughout the week, she focused on repertoire and performance. But on the weekends, she went to country bars to play her own songs. Slowly, she realized the dream driving her wasn’t singing opera at the Met. It was songwriting. Seeking a like-minded community, she started taking trips to Nashville and recorded her first demos. A friend advised her to connect with a guy there who “knew everybody.” A few years earlier, Ryan had started a rock band that was touring nationally. He had made a name for himself, but not just in music. Having gone to countless open houses while watching his parents manage investment properties, he had developed a ABOVE: Shannon Haley and Ryan Michaels of the country duo Haley & Michaels.
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