Who Are Pat Boone and Shirley Boone's Kids? Meet Their Children

Pat Boone‘s family means the world to him. He’ll never forget all the great moments he’s had with his four daughters, Debby, Cherry, Linda and Laurey, and his late wife, Shirley Boone. However, Pat wasn’t the only one who learned a lot from Shirley, his kids did too.

“My mother used to teach my sisters and me four-part harmony and have us sing for company. I got a lot of attention because I was little but I had a big voice,” Debby exclusively told Closer Weekly about what she’s learned from her mother. Shirley, who died from vasculitis at age 84 in January 2019, was a rising musician. She’s known for singing “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” and “The Hawaiian Wedding Song” with her husband.

Pat Boone and daughter Debby — Shutterstock

But even though she wanted her kids to be great stars, Shirley always told her children to listen to their six-time Grammy nominee dad. “[His lessons are] very similar to what I learned posthumously from my grandfather, which is the ability to be authentically themselves in front of an audience, which makes everybody comfortable,” Debby revealed about her father’s teachings. “They just made people feel like they were guests in their home.”

Now with a Grammy under her belt, Debby has become the most famous of her sisters. Back in the 1970s, the foursome called themselves The Boones when they formed the pop singing group and released their debut album, The Boone Girls, which was well-received in the gospel community. Because of their success and their incredible presence on stage, Variety once said, they had “one of the most talked-about shows of this or any other season.”

Pat Boone family — Bill Johnson/Associated Newspapers/Shutterstock

Sadly, the group didn’t last long as Debby went on to become a solo act while Cherry battled anorexia nervosa. But after getting the help she needed, the singer wrote her recovery process in Starving for Attention in 1982. Now, Cherry and her family are stronger than ever.

Scroll below to meet Pat and Shirley’s four kids!

Debby Boone

Pat and Shirley welcomed Debby in September 1956. After getting married to her husband, Gabriel Ferrer, in September 1979, the duo welcomed four kids together.

Some of Debby’s most popular songs are “You Light Up My Life” and “Keep the Flame Burning.” She’s also won three Grammys throughout her entire music career and has been nominated 10 times.

Linda Boone Michaelis (Far Left)

Linda has gone through a lot in her life. When her son, Ryan, was a little boy, he fell three stories down from a skylight on a roof and immediately had his skull crushed. Although doctors told her that her son would be in a vegetative state if he survived his deep coma, Linda still prayed for her little one to get better and thanks to medical marijuana, he’s doing “much better than anybody had ever predicted.”

The medicine helps him fight an involuntary reaction he has to seeing men he doesn’t know. “It’s really a fight-or-flight part of the brain. He feels threatened by other men, so we were kind of limited as to where we could go,” she explained during a previous appearance on Today. “He’s great with our family, with the men in our family, but when I’m able to give him some little bit of brownie, a little bit of chocolate (with medical marijuana), something that calms his anxiety, we can go to church.”

Linda shares Ryan with her husband, Charles Michaelis. She was born in October 1955.

Cherry Boone O’Neill (Front Row, Far Left)

Cherry, who was born in July 1954, struggled with anorexia nervosa in the mid-’70s and, thanks to her husband, Dan O’Neill, she got the help she desperately needed. However, Dan says it was hard for him to assist his wife because Cherry’s dad didn’t think she needed psychiatric care.

“I was not only fighting a father-in-law,” he previously recalled to People. “I was fighting Pat Boone, an American institution. I was telling Mr. Cookies-and-Milk what was best for his daughter.”

Although Cherry always saw her father as a “good” man, she felt a lot of pressure from “the expectations” people had of her as Pat’s kid. “I thought my father was perfect in every way,” she recalled. “So I wanted to be perfect too.” Cherry’s perfectionist nature made her start dieting and exercising at an unhealthy rate. But after years of starvation, she began to seek treatment and once she was better, she didn’t blame her family for any of her shortcomings.

“My relationship with my parents is healthier than before because I’m my own person,” Cherry said. “My identity no longer rises and falls with the Pat Boone family.”