Singer’s voice gets him audition with piano man
Jimmy Martin heard Drew Jansen before he saw him.
Jimmy had just moved back to Minneapolis from New York. It was 1988, and he was with friends visiting the piano bar he had opened and played as featured pianist in for five years before he left. The woman he had sold it to had invited Drew to perform while she took a break that night.
“My back was to the piano when he started to sing and I thought to myself, ‘Who is that?’ And I turned around and I saw him and I said, ‘Who is that?!’” Jimmy says.
When Drew finished singing, Jimmy introduced himself. They talked for hours that night, joined by a couple of friends.
“We closed the bar down and they had to kick us out,” Drew says. “It was a lovely conversation.”
They saw each other off and on throughout that summer.
“I would be playing somewhere and he would come in and I would go on a break and go sit and visit with him and I would think, ‘Well this is so nice, he’s come in to see me,’” Jimmy says. “Well, he would talk to me for a few minutes and then he would say, ‘Well, I’m going to go and talk with so-and-so now.’”
Drew wasn’t looking for a relationship, but when Jimmy bumped into him in downtown Minneapolis he decided to take a chance.
“I said, ‘I’m not a lonely person. I’m going to try this one more time and if this doesn’t work, I’m done,’” Jimmy says. “So I said, ‘Are you available Monday night for dinner?’ and he said, ‘I am.’”
That Monday is the day they celebrate as their anniversary — Aug. 28, 1988 — although it would be 26 years before they could formally exchange their marriage vows.
In the meantime, they enjoyed road trips together and spent time with friends. Both were involved in the Twin Cities Theater community.
“We were always involved in theatrical productions of one type or another, though very rarely together,” Drew says.
Drew tagged along when Jimmy performed with Carmel Quinn, of the Arthur Godfrey Show, at the Irish Repertory Theater in Manhattan, and Jimmy went with Drew when he did an industrial show at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.
They did — and still do — crossword puzzles together and watched Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune and reruns of The Golden Girls.
They were in Savannah, Ga., for their anniversary in 2013 when Drew proposed. He had bought a $25 ring in one of the shops along the boardwalk before they had dinner at the Olde Pink House.
“I found a box with a little etching of the name ‘Jimmy’
in a ship so I put it in that and actually the box cost more than the ring,” Drew says. “But I did the whole getdown-on-one-knee thing after dinner and the whole room just exploded in applause.”
He had been nervous about the process, but not about how Jimmy would respond.
“By this point we had long gotten to the ‘this is forever’ phase,” Drew says. “And to be honest, the reason we chose
the particular date that we got married is because that’s when the caterer was available.”
They had a garden wedding on May 24, 2014, in the backyard of their home, which they were preparing to put on the market right after they were married so they could move to Little Rock to be near Drew’s family.
“It was a very small wedding,” Jimmy says. “My children and grandchildren and my former wife and her husband — how about that? — were there.”
Jimmy has three children — Jimmy, Nora and Aaron, all of Minneapolis, as well as four grandchildren.
The minister passed Jimmy and Drew’s wedding rings around during the ceremony so their guests could hold them while sharing wishes for the couple’s future.
“Isn’t that beautiful?” Jimmy says. “One of my sons said, ‘I will always love you for being honest with us.’ And I thought, ‘Wow, that was a biggie,’ because sometimes you don’t know if what you’re telling them is what you should be telling them, even though it’s the truth. That one I remember in particular.”
Jimmy and Drew don’t often perform together, but they will be doing a fundraiser together for Argenta Community Theater. The Piano Men, as they’re called, will perform a musical celebration called What Matters Most, featuring Kathryn Pryor and Judy Trice, on Nov. 2 and 3 at the theater. Tickets are $100 per couple or $60 per individual.
“Partnered since 1988 and married since 2014, Jimmy and Drew celebrated 30 years together in August,” the news release about the event reads. “And that’s What Matters Most!’
“We’re different enough that we work together beautifully and I love the times we get the opportunity to do that,” Drew says. “If you’re writing a musical during the day and rehearsing it at night then you’re just not going to be around for a while, and some people might not understand that and we do. We each understand and support each other in whatever we’re doing.”