CBS first opened the gate to Kornfield Kounty on Sunday night, June 15, 1969. Within weeks, families knew the drill: Buck Owens and Roy Clark trading corny one-liners over “Cripple Creek” in the “Pickin’ and Grinnin'” segment, and cast members popping up out of the cornfield to deliver a joke before ducking back down. Hee Haw was dreamed up by two Canadian writers, Frank Peppiatt and John Aylesworth, as a country cousin to Laugh-In. “The critics all said that the only listeners that we had were country,” Clark recalled to NPR in 2016, and he never sounded bothered by it.
Those viewers turned out to be plenty. CBS dropped the show in July 1971 during the “rural purge” that also swept away The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres, but the producers took Hee Haw into first-run syndication, where it kept taping in Nashville until 1993. A big family of performers passed through that cornfield, and we checked on the faces you remember best, saving the ones still with us for last.
Is Stringbean still alive?
David “Stringbean” Akeman was a lanky Kentucky banjo picker and Opry star who was there from the first 1969 season, reading his “letter from home” and trading wisecracks with a crow as the cornfield scarecrow. On November 10, 1973, he and his wife, Estell, came home from the Opry to find two cousins, John and Doug Brown, waiting at their cabin near Ridgetop, Tennessee. Both were shot and killed, and Stringbean was 58.
His neighbor and castmate Grandpa Jones, who had planned to go hunting with him, found them the next morning. The Browns each received life sentences, and the Associated Press reported that John Brown was paroled in 2014 after more than 40 years in prison. The cast carried on, and one of its biggest laughs belonged to a man who had never planned on show business at all.
Is Junior Samples still alive?
Alvin “Junior” Samples was a sixth-grade dropout and stock car racer from Cumming, Georgia, who became famous by accident. He was around 40 when he told a local radio station a tall tale about the biggest fish anyone in town had ever seen, and the recording became the best-selling novelty record “World’s Biggest Whopper.” On Hee Haw, he sold used cars and told viewers to call BR-549, named for the initials of Brenda Reece, a friend of the cast.
Samples died of a heart attack in Cumming on November 13, 1983. Counting from his August 10, 1926 birthdate, he was 57, though The New York Times reported 56 at the time. Four years later, two more cast favorites died in the same summer.
Are Archie Campbell & Kenny Price still alive?
Archie Campbell was a charter cast member and one of the show’s head writers, and in his barbershop he told “Rindercella,” the fractured fairy tale in which the heroine “slopped her dripper.” He also played Doc Campbell, whose office came complete with Nurse Goodbody. After a heart attack and surgery that June, he died of kidney failure in Knoxville on August 29, 1987, at 72, UPI reported.
Kenny Price, “The Round Mound of Sound,” stood about 6’6″ and took “Walking on New Grass” and “Happy Tracks” to No. 7 on the country chart. He joined the show after moving to Nashville in 1975 and stayed for the rest of his life, which ended with a heart attack in Florence, Kentucky, on August 4, 1987, at 56. His home state later named a stretch of highway for him, according to WVXU. The next two losses came from the very top of country comedy.
Are Minnie Pearl & Grandpa Jones still alive?
Minnie Pearl was born Sarah Ophelia Colley in Centerville, Tennessee, and the trained dramatic actress built her act around a girl from Grinder’s Switch in a straw hat with a $1.98 price tag dangling from the brim. Her “How-DEE! I’m just so proud to be here!” rang through the Opry long before Hee Haw, and she entered the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1975. She died on March 4, 1996, at 83, from complications of a stroke, and Nashville’s Sarah Cannon Cancer Center still carries her married name.
Grandpa Jones answered “Hey Grandpa, what’s for supper?” with a rhyming menu that made viewers hungry, or sometimes made them wince. He entered the Hall of Fame in 1978 and was still playing the Opry at 84 when he suffered two strokes after a show in January 1998. He died on February 19, 1998, as Remind magazine recalled in its own look at the cast. Eight years later came the loss of the man who had stood in the cornfield since the first episode.
Is Buck Owens still alive?
Buck Owens arrived as a genuine star, having taken 21 singles to No. 1 with the Buckaroos, including “Act Naturally,” which the Beatles covered in 1965. He co-hosted until 1986, then went home to Bakersfield, where he beat oral cancer in the early 1990s and kept performing at his own Crystal Palace nightclub. We have also told the story of how Buck Owens crossed paths with Merle Haggard.
On March 24, 2006, Owens felt unwell at the Crystal Palace and was heading home when fans from Oregon stopped him, so he went back inside and played for them anyway, The Bakersfield Californian recalled. He died in his sleep at his ranch early the next morning at 76, of what his family described as heart failure. A few years later, Mayberry’s favorite mechanic followed him.
Is George Lindsey still alive?
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George Lindsey had already spent years as Goober Pyle on The Andy Griffith Show and Mayberry R.F.D. when CBS canceled the latter in 1971, and he carried the beanie and the grin over to Hee Haw for about 20 years. You can see how the rest of Mayberry is doing in our look at the surviving Andy Griffith Show cast.
Lindsey died in Nashville on May 6, 2012, at 83, after a stroke that March had left him in poor health, the Associated Press reported. “George Lindsey was my friend,” Andy Griffith said. Six years later, the other host was gone too.
Is Roy Clark still alive?
Roy Clark, the banjo and guitar wizard from Meherrin, Virginia, hosted or co-hosted every season, and “Yesterday, When I Was Young” proved he could sing as well as he picked. He opened a theater in Branson, Missouri, in 1983, joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1987 and entered the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2009. “I’ve told everyone that I grew old on Hee Haw, but I could’ve grown old without it,” he joked to NPR.
Clark died of complications from pneumonia at his home in Tulsa on November 15, 2018, at 85, leaving Barbara, his wife of 61 years. He was not the only banjo star in the cast, and the other one came from a family that had been making music for generations.
Is Roni Stoneman still alive?
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Roni Stoneman, “The First Lady of the Banjo,” was the second-youngest of 23 children born to Ernest “Pop” Stoneman and his wife, Hattie. On Hee Haw, she became Ida Lee Nagger, the gap-toothed woman at the ironing board in the “Pfft! You Was Gone” bits, and late in life she glued picks to her arthritic fingers to keep playing. “I can’t be playing with the tips of my fingers,” she explained to Banjo News.
Stoneman died in February 2024 at 85, and Variety noted that no cause was given. “She was a great talent and a strong woman,” said Kyle Young of the Country Music Hall of Fame. The following year brought two more goodbyes within two months.
Is Lulu Roman still alive?
Lulu Roman spent her childhood in a home for unwed mothers and an orphanage, and she was working as a go-go dancer when her friend Buck Owens brought her to the producers. Drug problems got her let go early on. After she found her faith, she came back to Hee Haw and built a gospel career, winning a Dove Award in 1985.
Roman died on April 23, 2025, in Bellingham, Washington, where she had moved to live with her son, Damon, who confirmed her death to The Hollywood Reporter. She was 78, and no cause was announced. You can read our full tribute to Lulu Roman and her road from comedy to gospel. Two months later, the cook at her truck stop was gone as well.
Is Gailard Sartain still alive?
Gailard Sartain joined the cast in 1972 as Orville the cook at Lulu’s Truck Stop and Maynard, the hopeless clerk at Gordie’s General Store. Hollywood later cast him as the Big Bopper in The Buddy Holly Story and gave him parts in Mississippi Burning, Fried Green Tomatoes and several Ernest films. He was also a painter whose art landed on a Leon Russell album cover, a side of him we explored in our look at his career.
Sartain died of natural causes at his home in Tulsa on June 19, 2025, at 81, his wife told The Hollywood Reporter, and Gray News carried the report nationwide. That brings us to the happy part of this story, starting with the nurse every patient wanted.
Is Gunilla Hutton still alive?
Yes. Gunilla Hutton was born in Gothenburg, Sweden, on May 15, 1944, and came to America at 7 speaking no English. She was the second Billie Jo on Petticoat Junction in 1965 and 1966 before spending more than two decades as Nurse Goodbody, the reason so many of Doc Campbell’s patients suddenly felt worse. She left Hee Haw in 1992 and was married to Air Force pilot Allan Freeman for 43 years, until his death in 2014.
Hutton is 82 today. She stays off social media, but Looper reported in February 2026 that she still turns up at fan conventions with Linda Kaye Henning and Lori Saunders from our surviving Petticoat Junction cast. One of Buck’s Buckaroos is still out on the road, too.
Is Jana Jae still alive?
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Yes. Jana Jae had already won the ladies’ national fiddling championship when Buck Owens hired her into the Buckaroos, and the blue fiddle he bought her became her trademark. They married in 1977, though Owens filed for an annulment within days and their on-and-off romance ended in divorce. “I have to give the credit to Buck,” she told Bluegrass Today of her career.
Born August 30, 1943, Jae is 83, and she still runs fiddle camps and the American Heritage Music Festival in Grove, Oklahoma, which the town listed for June 2026 with Jae on the bill. Two of the show’s later stars have kept a quieter profile.
Are Barbi Benton & Irlene Mandrell still alive?
Yes, both are. Barbi Benton, born Barbara Klein in New York City on January 28, 1950, came to the cornfield from Playboy After Dark and stayed four seasons, scoring a No. 5 country hit with “Brass Buckles” in 1975 along the way. She married developer George Gradow in 1979 and stepped back from show business after their first child arrived in 1986. Benton is 76.
Irlene Mandrell, born January 29, 1956, was a Honey in the later years and starred with her sisters Barbara and Louise on Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters. She is 70 now, and since the late 1990s she has hosted a celebrity shooting event that raises money for Wish Upon a Star and the Boy Scouts. Then there is the Honey who once dated a king.
Is Linda Thompson still alive?
Yes. Linda Thompson, born in Memphis on May 23, 1950, was Elvis Presley’s girlfriend for about four years after they met in 1972, and she became a Hee Haw regular in 1977. She married Bruce Jenner, now Caitlyn, in 1981, and they had sons Brandon and Brody. With her second husband, David Foster, she co-wrote “I Have Nothing” for The Bodyguard, which earned an Academy Award nomination.
Thompson is 76, and as we reported this month, she said goodbye to summer 2026 on Instagram with a carousel of family snapshots. The last Honey on our list never really left the stage.
Is Misty Rowe still alive?
Yes. Misty Rowe, born June 1, 1952, in San Gabriel, California, was the squeaky-voiced blonde who spent 19 years on the show, many of them as Junior Samples’ helper on the used car lot. She also played Wendy the carhop on Happy Days and starred in the 1978 spin-off Hee Haw Honeys with a young Kathie Lee Gifford. “I first learned about Hee Haw through my father. It was his favorite show,” she told Fox News in 2019.
At 74 she is still bringing Kornfield Kounty to the stage. On October 23, 2025, she headlined a Hee Haw Honey Reunion show in Princeton, West Virginia, WVVA reported. The reunions began, she told Fox News, at the memorial for producer Sam Lovullo. “We all called him papa Sam because Hee Haw was like our second family,” Rowe said, and every time she steps back on a stage, that family gets together one more time.