When you first sat down to watch The Golden Girls, something immediately began to register in your heart; you found yourself deciding if you were a Rose, Blanche, Sophia, or Dorothy. Each character had recognizable and relatable personality traits, and you might have even started assigning roles to your closest friends, with pieces of their personalities also tying into the actresses who played them.
Betty White loved bringing Rose Nylund to life, and in a chat with DVD Talk more than a decade and a half ago, she opened up about a treasured memory that was only possible because of her portrayal of the beloved character and the series we know and love.
She opened up about the inspiration for St. Olaf, Nylund’s hometown before moving to Miami, and how the town from Golden Girls was actually not a town at all, but a lovely college in Minnesota. When Golden Girls first started, she wondered how Minnesotans would react to Rose as a character, as she explains below:
“Well, St. Olaf, we treated on the show as the town of St. Olaf that Rose came from. But actually, it’s a wonderful college in Minnesota. And I thought because Rose was not the swiftest oar in the water, that they would resent the fact that she was painting a wrong picture of them. Well, they took Rose to their hearts; they sent me St. Olaf shirts and all that. They invited me back to visit the college, which I did, and they have this magnificent chorus. It’s famous all over the world; they travel all over the world. In fact, some of the exchange students said when people would ask them in Germany, ‘Where are you going to school?’ ‘Oh, St. Olaf,’ ‘Oh, The Golden Girls,’ they said, ‘No, we’re going there because of their chorus.’ And they say, ‘Oh, we didn’t know The Golden Girls sang.’ You can’t explain it to anybody.”
For long-time fans of the The Golden Girls, it had to be a little confusing. St. Olaf is a fictional town in The Golden Girls, but the college is very real (yes, we considered applying there ourselves), and they’ve got wonderful programs offered, including a renowned chorus who White and Rue McClanahan had a special interaction with.
Fans of The Golden Girls know that there was nothing like a scene between Blanche and Rose, so we can only imagine that the St. Olaf chorus had quite the life-changing experience getting to sing alongside the pair, and on White’s birthday — making the whole thing extra special.
“One week, they came out en masse; they were appearing in Los Angeles down at the concert hall. And 70 of them came to the show. And so – it happened to be my birthday. So Rue and I came out on a warm-up beforehand, and we sang their college song. ‘They come from St. Olaf; they sure are the real stuff.’ And it ends with ‘Um-ya-ya, um-ya-ya.’ So we sang it to them as a joke. Well, 70 voices in all of its umpteenth-part harmony sang ‘Happy Birthday’ back to us. It was the most gorgeous thing you ever heard in your life. Rue and I crept off the stage. We promise we’d never sing again.”
They may have promised never to sing again after the powerful experience, but we imagine that that birthday memory stayed with White for years to come. She got to experience a once-in-a-lifetime moment with a close friend while, in turn, paying homage to the show that brought them together. While White’s passing in 2021 left a massive hole in our hearts, there’s something special about knowing that our favorite Golden Girls are together again, having all the cheesecake their hearts desire.