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KANSAS CITY, Mo. \u2014 \u201cThe Golden Girls\u201d is celebrating its 40th anniversary with a new special debuting on Hulu Wednesday, November 12. A Raytown grad is part of that special, because she\u2019s the woman who sang the show\u2019s theme song.<\/p>\n
Cindy Fee has been on recordings and sung backup with the likes of Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton and Whitney Houston. But she is probably best known for a simple six-word phrase, \u201cThank You for Being a Friend\u201d (originally recorded by Andrew Gold).<\/p>\n
Capital Grille, Yard House, new hotel coming to Aspiria campus in Overland Park <\/a><\/p>\n Fee just released her own version of the song for the first time this month with instrumentals by another former Kansas Citian Mark Leggett. Fee got her start to her musical career in Kansas City beginning performing at the age of 16.<\/p>\n \u201cI was in a band called Hotfoot that kind of rose to the top of the Kansas City scene for quite a while and while I was there in Kansas City I sang at the first year of Worlds of Fun, shows how old I am,\u201d Fee said.<\/p>\n She moved to L.A. and began singing demos for Diane Warren and jingles for several long running national commercials when she got a fairly common request to record a theme song for a pilot in 1985.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t know the people I was working with and I came in and they told me it was a show called \u201cThe Golden Girls.\u201d They really didn\u2019t tell me too much else about it,\u201d Fee said.<\/p>\n Download WDAF+ for Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV <\/a><\/p>\n She\u2019s been told that quick recording of \u201cThank You for Being a Friend\u201d has been heard 8 billion times. Now on her social media accounts she \u201cthanks you for being a fan,\u201d and is connecting listeners to the new version with the familiar lyrics and the second verse you\u2019ve likely never heard.<\/p>\n Fee said Betty White\u2019s 2021 death and increased streaming during the pandemic led to people discovering and rediscovering the show. She\u2019s since received a lot more requests to sing the song she\u2019d left off her set lists for decades.<\/p>\n \u201cThe conventions were amazing they literally were thousands of people,\u201d she said of recent invites to Golden-Con where she\u2019s met new pals and confidants.<\/p>\n She traveled down a road and back again to Raytown, where in 2022, they threw a party and invited everyone they knew for her induction in to the school\u2019s Alumni Hall of Game. If you see her around town or at a convention she says she loves when people sing to her, but doesn\u2019t mind a request.<\/p>\n