Russell Dickerson and his wife, Kailey Dickerson, were honored with the Randy Owen Angels Among Us Award during the 36th annual Country Cares for St. Jude Kids event. The award recognizes a country music artist who has demonstrated exceptional dedication and service to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
The award was presented to the couple by its namesake, Randy Owen of ALABAMA, who founded the Country Cares program in 1989. Since then, the country music community has raised hundreds of millions of dollars to help ensure St. Jude families never have to pay for treatment, travel, housing or food.
Past recipients of the honor include Keith Urban, Old Dominion, Brothers Osborne, Scotty McCreery, Lady A, Darius Rucker, Jake Owen and Brad Paisley.
Ahead of the special dinner where Owen presented them with the award, Russell and Kailey spoke to Country Now about what it meant to receive such a special honor together.
“Such a huge honor to receive this, especially together. And as parents now, it means a whole different thing to have children of our own. And when you meet these families and see where they’re at and just an unimaginable situation and knowing how incredible St. Jude is to come through for these families year after year, decade after decade, it’s just the highest honor that we could do to give back and to promote St. Jude at every turn of our influence, what little influence we have on the world. I hope that we can point people to God and St. Jude,” Russell told us.
“You can’t go to St. Jude and leave the same as you came. It is such an honor to partner with them and never in a million years did we think this was part of the process. It was such a surprise and such an honor and it’s honestly kind of hard to receive. But we love St. Jude and we’ll be here supporting them forever,” Kailey added.
Things became official later that evening when Owen presented the couple with the award. Together, Russell and Kailey delivered a speech lasting more than seven minutes, reflecting on their first visit to St. Jude in 2017, when Russell was on tour with Thomas Rhett.
“This isn’t about us. This is about these kids,” Kailey told the crowd from the stage.
She went on to thank Randy Owen for “paving the way” and offered prayers for the families at St. Jude, as well as the research conducted there to help children around the world.
Russell shared how supporting St. Jude is deeply rooted in his family before revealing why he believes he and Kailey were selected to receive the award.
“I’m not the biggest superstar in country music by any means, nor am I the biggest donor to St. Jude by any means either. We just paid off our student loans a few years ago,” he said with a laugh. “And the only thing I can really think of of why it would be us up here is the word yes.”
He continued, “We get pulled in a lot of directions in this industry and in this business and we get a lot asked from us to be here, fly there, play here, call here. And honestly, as we have built a family, it’s become a lot more nos. But if I ever hear the two magical words, St. Jude, yes.”
For the “Worth Your Wild” singer, the answer is always “yes” when St. Jude is involved. He then turned that message into a challenge for the room full of country radio programmers, influencers and media members.
“So I challenge you, everybody here tonight, when you hear those magical words, those two magical words, St. Jude, what do we say?”
A resounding “YES” rang out throughout the crowd.
St. Jude is leading the way the world understands, treats and works to defeat childhood cancer and other life-threatening diseases.
Those inspired by Russell Dickerson’s challenge can help make a difference by donating at MusicGives.org.