Keith Anderson Reveals His “Romeo” Past

Establishing himself first as a songwriter before he became a recording artist, Keith Anderson's career path in country music has been fairly typical -- which means the success he's enjoyed didn't happen overnight. He also had his share of unusual jobs along the way, including working as a sorority house boy, where he learned there was such a thing as a free lunch.

"I was just broke in college and one of my fraternity brothers' mom was the house mom at one of the sororities," Keith tells the Chattanooga Times Free Press. "She would always hire the guys from the fraternity [to] serve the food to the girls, do all the dishes. We did it because we got free food. We got breakfast, lunch and dinner."

Keith also found a way to hone his entertainment skills by teaming up with a buddy to deliver singing telegrams as the Romeo Cowboys, performing popular country music instead of the more traditional tunes associated with singing telegrams.

"At that time you could look up singing telegrams in the yellow pages and you'd get the guys in the bow ties singing, 'Hello, my baby, hello my darlin', hello my ragtime gal...,'" he says, explaining that the pair wanted to do something more suited to their talents.

Although they initially struggled to pay the bills, after talking about the business venture on a Dallas radio station one morning, the calls came pouring in.

"It was my first experience in how powerful radio was," says Keith. "One morning in fifteen minutes on the radio, we had more calls than we could imagine. I kept it going for seven years because it was such a lucrative thing for me."