The Day I Met Stevie Nicks

Photo by George Burns

One of the final shows I produced on the The Oprah Show was called "Women Who Rock." It was an idea I had pushed for all season and finally I got the green light. We featured Stevie Nicks, Joan Jett and Pat Benatar who performed with music stars they had inspired. Stevie sang Landslide with Sheryl Crow, Pat sang Love Is A Battlefield with Avril Levigne and Joan sang Cherry Bomb with Miley Cyrus. We didn't tell our audience Sheryl Crow was on the show. We just asked her to walk out when Stevie was midway through Landsllde and surprise the audience which she did.

Stevie, Pat and Joan were big influences on me when I was growing up. I used to play guitar and sing in a band when I was in high school (not very well I must add) but Stevie Nicks was my idol growing up. I couldn't get enough of Fleetwood Mac or her one-of-a-kind style. Her burgundy thigh high boots and flowy, billowy dresses, and that black satin top hat. Nobody looked or sounded like her.

Working on the Oprah show, we all got to meet a lot of celebrities but few had as big of an impact on me as Stevie. When I was prepping her for her interview with Oprah, she was warm and gracious. I told her what she meant to me when I was in high school and she stared me in the eyes and listened as if she hadn't heard the same story a thousand times before.

It was always considered unprofessional and verboten to take photos with celebrity guests but Stevie said she wanted to take a picture with me. Me! So we did and that's the photo you see here.

When I was prepping Oprah for that show, I told her how Stevie, Joan and Pat had paved a path for women in rock. I also told her when I was growing up, I wanted to be Stevie Nicks. After the show taped, Oprah put her arm around me and said, "I see why you wanted to be her." Even Oprah was under Stevie's spell.

I asked all of the women to sign my show scripts that day and Oprah signed one as well. That’s the photo you see here.

But what really blew me away was when after the taping, Stevie invited a bunch of us who had worked on the show to her performance at the United Center that night. Her team put us on the third row and it was magical. She even introduced us to the crowd. And when she sang Landslide, just like it happened in our studio, Sheryl Crow walked out, a total surprise to the audience, mid-way through the song, and joined in. The audience went wild and we were beside ourselves. We were surprised by the same surprise we had orchestrated earlier that day.

If you had told my 16 year old self I'd one day get to meet Stevie Nicks, actually talk to her, and have her recognize me and my colleagues at one of her concerts, my heart would have burst right then and there. So, thank God no one told me that would happen and that I lived to actually experience the legend, the one and only, Stevie Nicks.