Roy Rogers and Dale Evans’ Daughter Reflects on Their Sweetest Moments: ‘They Were Very Good for Each Other’

Julie Rogers Pomilia didn’t realize her grandfather was famous until her second grade teacher called her up to her desk.

“Do you know who that is?” the teacher asked, pointing to a stack of magazines with Roy Rogers’ face on them. “I said, ‘Yeah, that’s my grandpa,’” Julie exclusively recalls to Closer. “She made a big deal out of it in front of the class, [but] I just figured everybody’s grandpa had a TV show.”

On The Roy Rogers Show, which ran from 1951 to 1957, Roy and his wife, Dale Evans, swept viewers away into a world of heroic cowboys and cowgirls protecting good, honest people from bad guys. They lived those values of truth, faith, bravery and kindness in their private lives too.

“They were who you hoped they would be offscreen,” says Julie, who is the author of the memoir Your Heroes, My Grandparents: A Granddaughter’s Love.

The pair teamed up for the first time in 1944’s Cowboy and the Senorita. By that time, Roy, who had begun singing professionally at age 19, had become one of the country’s most bankable western stars. Dale, meanwhile, was a spitfire who sang, danced, played piano and wrote songs.

“Happy Trails,” the theme song that ended episodes of their western show, was one of her compositions. It was a case of opposites attracting.

“They were very good for each other,” their daughter Mary Little Doe Rogers, aka Dodie, exclusively tells Closer. “Dad tended to be on the quiet side, but he had an inner strength. Mom was very social. She loved being around people and she fit in everywhere she went.”

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The couple wed on New Year’s Eve 1947 in Oklahoma. In addition to becoming a professional team, they created one of America’s most legendary blended families at a time when it was not so common. Roy brought three children into the union from his previous two marriages, while Dale was already mother to son Tom. Together, they had one daughter, Robin, who tragically died at age 2 from complications of mumps, and adopted four other kids.

“We all just blended in great,” says Dodie, 73, whose heritage is Native American. She and her sister Debbie, who was born in North Korea, were the youngest of the family. “The age difference was the biggest difference” between the kids, she says, explaining that her brother Tom was 24 years her senior. “We kind of got underfoot with the older ones.”

Dodie has a lot of fond memories, which she is putting into a book she is writing about her family.

Dale Evans and Roy Rogers’ Home on the Range

Dale and Roy made faith a central part of their lives and that of their children.

“Neither one of them were Christians that just talked it. They lived it,” says Julie, who suggests that Dale’s beliefs were particularly strong because of the hardships she faced before she met Roy, who was her fourth husband.

Born into poverty in Texas, Dale began singing as a child and hungered for stardom.

“She wanted to sing and dance, but she was Southern Baptist and I’m not sure they allowed it,” says Dodie.

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Dale eloped at age 14 and gave birth to her son Tom the following year. After being abandoned by her first husband, she struggled as a single mother and was married and divorced two more times. Finding Jesus and marrying Roy gave Dale what she had been searching for.

“Before that, she was chasing fame and that’s kind of a dead end,” Julie explains. “She made a mess of her life but she figured it out and learned from her mistakes. She accepted Christ, went back to church, and it honestly changed her life.”

Roy, meanwhile, was taught to value hard work growing up on a farm in Ohio.

“He never wanted to be famous,” says Julie. “He wanted to be a doctor. But he had a beautiful voice and played guitar and he just sort of fell into it. One thing just led to another.”

Dodie attended church weekly with her parents and remembers them as strict but fair with their children.

“They had rules and if you didn’t abide by them, there were consequences,” she says. “One thing dad was very particular about was taking good care of your stuff. You don’t leave tools outside. You don’t play with something you could mess up.”

Dale Evans and Roy Rogers’ Special Love

Despite their strong moral cores, granddaughter Julie could talk to her grandparents about absolutely anything.

“Dale was the most nonjudgemental Christian I have ever met in my life,” she says. “These days, I’m hard pressed to find somebody who’s very adamant about their beliefs, but also willing to really listen to somebody else’s viewpoint. But they were the easiest people to talk to.”

Even though Roy could be a man of few words, he had a very warm relationship with his granddaughter.

“My grandpa was very, very shy. He was hard to get to know unless you were talking about dogs, horses or maybe my rock collection,” she says.

When Julie was 9 or 10, she shared her enthusiasm for collecting with Roy. Her grandfather brought her to the garage, where to her surprise, he had his own assortment of gems.

“He put all of his beautiful stones into my box,” Julie recalls. “He just said, ‘I think you might enjoy these. Why don’t you keep them?’”

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Dale could also be very generous with her 16 grandchildren — but in her own fashion.

“She would say, ‘What do you want for your birthday?’” recalls Julie, who once told her grandmother she wanted a dress. “She goes, ‘Well, I want to get you a purse.’ She ended up getting me a dress and a purse, because she was funny that way.’”

Dodie recalls her parents creating family outings.

“They would always take us out to the ranch,” Dodie says. “We got to ride Trigger and Nellie Bell,” which was the famous Jeep from The Roy Rogers Show. “We always had animals around us. Dad kept pigeons and had like 40 dogs.”

Famous friends did sometimes drop by.

“Clark Gable and grandpa played golf together and shot skeet,” recalls Julie, who joined the whole family on a 1968 episode of The Jonathan Winters Show. “Grandpa also did a movie with Bob Hope and knew Bing Crosby.”

Dale and Roy sometimes even hobnobbed with presidents, but it didn’t make them haughty.

“They could be staying at the White House one weekend — they were close with the Eisenhowers — but then they could come back home and be on the living room floor playing Old Maid with us,” remembers Julie.

Holidays at their home could be raucous.

“There could be 60 or 70 people gathered for Thanksgiving,” she says. “It was loud, but they were in their element. They loved being together with their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. They were wonderful family people.”

Roy and Dale also set a remarkable example of how to live a good life beyond their family circle.

“They became so famous that people felt like they were their parents,” says Dodie, adding that Roy and Dale felt it was important to give back to the world. The Happy Trails Children’s Foundation is just one of the causes they championed to help children in need. “They reached out to kids that were poor, kids that were abused and kids that were sick. It really united people to know that these famous people really did care about them.”