Anyone who was looking would have noticed that Ray Charles made frequent trips to St. Louis—most often by commercial jet, not his regular touring plane, and nearly always without his entourage. St. Louis meant a lot more to Charles than an occasional tour stop where he’d play at the Fox Theatre and unwind in the marble-bathroomed luxury of a Ritz-Carlton suite. St. Louis meant a plate of homemade pork chops smothered in gravy; the occasional late-night run to White Castle for his favorite burgers; and the open arms of a warm, caring woman and her two lovely daughters.
The woman was Marci Soto, a tiny, fine-boned woman with olive skin and flashing eyes who was in love with Charles for close to three decades. Charles’ “luxury suite” was a modest, impeccably kept home in the suburban outpost of Kirkwood. He spent hours there, playing the basement upright and singing with Soto and her two little girls. His favorite lunch was a toasted-cheese sandwich, Soto says (by 1980 she’d become a vegan), and they often whiled away the afternoon playing word games.
Soto met Charles in the summer of 1968, at the Fontainbleau Hotel in New Orleans, where she was living at the time. There was an immediate spark between them—one that lasted for nearly 30 years, despite the many times he tested her patience. “When we first met, I was in a daze for two weeks,” she says. “I just lived in a daze. I couldn’t figure out what to wear, what to do. The first time he came to see me, he had on a black Nehru shirt and pants and looked like a dream.”
Knowing that Charles was married (his divorce was not final until 1978), she eventually broke off their relationship and started seeing someone else, but after his divorce, Charles won her back.
“That mournful, loving, spirited way that he sang was very much how he was as a person,” says Soto, now 68. “He was the most sensitive, caring man I’ve ever known. He made me strong, taught me to be self-sufficient and helped me to see the beautiful side of myself—the side that I had almost forgotten when he stepped into my life.”
Soto’s relationship with Charles led her to leave her unhappy marriage, return to herhometown of St. Louis and never look back. “It was glorious to enjoy such a deep connec-tion with another person,” she says. “Despite our very different backgrounds, we had a lot in common—maybe too much.” She laughs wryly. “It’s hard to figure who was more stubborn and who was more sensitive.”
There was one main difference: “Ray was far more patient than I. He’d sit and listen to me go on about any problem I had, no matter how small, and was very indulgent of my moods. Ray had a calming influence on me. That’s probably one reason we stayed together so long—and why we stayed home often. It made us both happy to share a game of chess [with pegged pieces custom-made for Charles] in pajamas and slippers, and I think Ray genuinely loved having a place where he could relax and remain relatively anonymous. He enjoyed being home with the kids—the ‘young ’uns,’ as he called them.”
Soto says that, in the early days, her neighbors were all aflutter, peeking in her windows just to get a glimpse of him—“but before long, everyone treated Ray just like another guy on the block. And, except for the neighbors, I don’t think anyone realized Ray spent so much time in this area. Things were different then. There were no paparazzi to track Ray’s every move, and, when people did see him, they usually were polite and gave us space.”
Little did they know, Ray’s fans were more likely to bump into him at the Red Lobster on South Lindbergh than at the Chase Park Plaza. In fact, that’s exactly how Charles met Soto’s best friends, Don and Colleen Eaker—but not by coincidence.
“I didn’t want Ray to think I was trying to flaunt him—especially since they were huge fans—so I didn’t introduce them directly,” Soto admits. “Instead, they ‘happened’ to sit at the booth next to us. We acted surprised, and Colleen offered to make Ray his favorite dessert—blackberry pie—on his next visit. Colleen came through with the goods, and it was the beginning of a friendship that lasted more than 24 years.”
Once, after dinner at Al Baker’s, the foursome retired to the piano bar and chatted with the piano player, who asked Charles to play “Georgia.” Charles graciously declined, saying, “I’d rather hear you play.” After a quick, self-conscious musical tribute, the pianist mentioned that he’d been Charles’ opening act four years earlier. According to Don Eaker, who vividly remembers the evening, “The amazing part was, Ray actually remembered this guy. Ray rattled off two songs he played as if it were yesterday. Ray’s keen ear for musical detail must’ve made that musician’s day.”
An arty, intellectual type who could just as easily be sporting a beret in Montmartre, Paris, as his Santa Fe–style turquoise bolo tie, Don was delighted by Soto’s relationship with Charles. “Marci and I have known each other for most of our lives,” he says, “and I was really protective of her. But Ray was so comfortable—he wasn’t Ray Charles, musical celebrity, and he wasn’t self-absorbed at all around us. He was just a guy interested in what you thought, what you were interested in and what you were doing. He would give a thoughtful, honest answer to almost anything you’d ask. He was very good for Marci.”
Soto says that, to her knowledge, Charles never used drugs when he was with her, never even drank much: “And believe me, I went through everything he had with a fine-tooth comb!” Still, she tried a few times to break it off with Charles so she would feel free to have a more normal relationship with someone else. Once, when they were “on the outs,” Charles played the Stegton Restaurant and Ballrooms, overlooking the Missouri River on Interstate 70 (since renamed the Stegton Regency and relocated to 1450 Wall Street in St. Charles). Soto refused to go, but the Eakers wouldn’t miss it.
“Ray put us in the front row as part of our usual routine,” recalls Don, “but about two-thirds through the show he said, ‘I ordinarily don’t do dedications, but I have a dear friend in St. Louis who couldn’t come tonight, and I’d like to dedicate this song to her.’ Of course he knew we’d tell Marci. There were about a thousand people there, and you could have heard a pin drop when he played ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You.’”
The ballroom’s owners, Susie and Eric Stegemann, remember Charles’ performances well: “Ray performed two shows a day to sold-out audiences,” says Susie. “Afterwards, our chef, L.D. Loggins, prepared food especially for him and his valet in the wee hours of the morning. They had a terrific time together.”
Generally when Charles came to see Soto, he traveled without a valet, taking fierce pride in his independence. He’d come into the house on his own, bring in his own luggage, hang up his coat and unpack. But Soto did get to know one of Charles’ valets, Bob Taylor, very well. He was the first valet she met when she started seeing Charles, and he even joined his boss and Soto when her mother cooked up a fried-chicken dinner on Charles’ first visit to meet the family. Soto still plays, from time to time, the home movie that captures her mother’s excited conversation with Charles and Taylor.
Another employee of Charles’, former road manager Ed Langford, lives in the St. Louis area—and not by coincidence. Soto says it was she who introduced him to his longtime companion.
She recalls another time, in the late ’70s, when she stopped seeing Charles. He was playing at the Chase Club, at Lindell and Kingshighway, and this time she went with Don and Colleen. “We were in the audience, and Ray walked down the aisle from the back. When he went by, I stood up and said, ‘Hi, sweetheart.’”
Until she murmured the greeting, Charles had no idea Soto was in the audience. “He stopped and looked right in my direction, saying, ‘Uh-huh, I heard that. I heard you, babe.’” She recalls. “That night he dedicated ‘Am I Blue?’ to me. I had started seeing someone else, so he knew exactly what he was doing when he picked that song: ‘There was a time when I was [her] only one, but now I am the sad and lonely one ...’ It was heartbreaking, because I truly still loved Ray. After that song, I just had to go backstage after the show. Ray sure knew how to get me.”
One of the couple’s favorite haunts was the Breckenridge Frontenac Hotel (now the Frontenac Hilton), a lovely place with huge antiques and soft lighting. “Other times, my mom would watch the girls,” says Soto, “and we’d slip away to the Viking Hotel for dinner and some private time, because it was close to the house. On Sundays, we’d take Lisa and Mitzi [Soto’s daughters] out for a drive or some ice cream at the old Velvet Freeze. When people saw us together, they’d give a friendly ‘Hey, Ray’ or shake hands, but they were generally very polite.”
Every now and then, though, someone went a little overboard. Soto remembers eating with Charles at a small Chinese restaurant near her home. A woman approached their table and asked, “Are you really Ray Charles?’
“’Fraid so,” he replied. The woman raced home, got her daughter and brought her directly back. The situation got a little awkward, at which point Soto remembers Charles saying, adamantly but politely, “Ma’am, our family’s just trying to have dinner.”
In 1997, Soto tired of Ray’s life on the road and stopped seeing him. Her last memory with him is the 1997 Variety Club charity event at the Adam’s Mark Hotel, where Charles was the guest of honor. “He encouraged us all to go and was excited because the girls were old enough to dress up, come out with us and bring dates,” she says, “but I had gained some weight and truly didn’t have a thing to wear. ‘That’s no excuse,’ he said. ‘You know I’ll buy you a dress, babe.’
“Mitzi and I still laugh about our ill-fated mission to find something—anything—to hide my extra few pounds,” says Soto. “I must’ve tried on half the formalwear department at Saks. Ray got very frustrated with us for getting back to the hotel late. Once he got over it, we had a great time—but I’ve never worn that beige chiffon number since.”
Her smile fades: “To us, Ray was not the uncaring lout portrayed in the movie [2004’s Ray]. He was very sweet and attentive. He would not let something as silly as a dress stand in the way of a night out with his girls.”
She’s glad she went—because it was the last time she saw him. They spoke shortly before his death, and he sounded weak and raspy. “I cried the whole time,” Soto says, “and when I found out he was dead, I just crumpled to the floor.”
Today Soto runs a housecleaning company, All About Cleaning, Inc., with her daughter Lisa. She still lives in the Kirkwood house. Nobody’s played the old upright piano in years.
Eileen Michaels, a New York writer, is working on a book about Marci Soto’s relationship with Ray Charles.
