Wayne Rostad

•  He lives in Pakenham, Ontario and has a son named Josh.

•  In 1969, Wayne got his first break as an RJ for CJET in Smiths Falls , Ontario.

•  From radio, he moved to music and recordings in 1980s'. and won a nomination in Juno award.

•  He slowly moved away from broadcasting and turned to music delivering several hit albums.

•  He returned to broadcasting with CBC's national TV show 'On The Road Again' which featured Wayne as a host. He brought various stories from the streets of Ottawa to light with his show which won several awards.

•  He participates in various charitable events such as telethons for the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario and the University of Ottawa Heart Institute.

•  Before Trudy he had married Leanne Cusack a news anchor at Ottawa's CTV News channel. But parted ways with her soon.

•  He served as a Canadian Forces Honorary Colonel for the 8 Air Maintenance Squadron.

In the 1980s, Wayne Rostad was recruited by the CBC to host a national show titled “On The Road Again”.  The show came with a unique concept of telling stories of people from different walks of life in Canada. While talking about the show, he once said, "While working, "I never went to work for On the Road Again. I went to visit my neighbors." Rostad shared that he got to meet several Canadians with their own unique stories everyday while working in the show. 

The show soon became a huge hit among people all over the country. Everyone desired to be featured on the show with their stories. The show also won a number of awards during its run of 20 years including the one for best host, best program and best regional variety series. After the show went off air, in 1996, Wayne wrote about life on the road in his book named, 'On the Road Again with Wayne Rostad',. Just like the show the book too quickly became a Canadian bestseller.

Christmas in the valley show is Wayne Rostad's popular Christmas show where he performs with his band at various venues throughout Ottawa and eastern Ontario. 2019 edition of the show took place on December 12, 2019  in Ottawa. Apart from the popular band of Wayne RoRoger Lefebvrestad, the show was graced by fiddling sensation, recording artist and step dancer extraordinaire Kelli Trottier. Various other local artists from the city also participated in the show and made it a huge it.

Leanne Cusack is Wayne Rostad's first wife. She hosts a news program titled 'Noon Host' on Ottawa's CTV News channel.  She hails from Halifax. She moved to Ottawa to study Journalism at Carleton University. She began working at CTV and then joined CJOH, during her fourth year in the city. Leanne is also very active in a variety of local charities in the city. 

She is also a board member of the Ottawa Senators Foundation, who played an active role in laying its foundation. Leanne has recently started her journey as an artist as well. She has created her website where she shares several paintings produced by her as a painter. She also has a YouTube channel for the same. Leanne Cusack shared a romantic relation with Wayne. They also reportedly have a child together. But things did not fall in place for the couple and they parted ways.

After parting ways with his first wife, Leanne Cusack, Wayne met Trudy somewhere around 1987. Their romance lasted for about a year and they decided to go their own separate ways. Decades passed and suddenly one day, Wayne got a message from Trudy and the love-birds reunited. The duo has been together ever since. In an interview, Wayne also recalled about Trudy & said he remained single ever since Trudy left him in the past because she was special. Trudy and Wayne who own a beautiful bungalow now often play golf together. Wayne also says that Trudy too sings good and joins in whenever he takes a guitar and starts humming.

“We got together and the years collapsed. It’s a wonderful experience to have love again in my life. I’m extremely happy,” Wayne said as he talked about Trudy in a interview. In short, even in his seventies, Wayne shares an old-school romantic type of relationship with the love of his life, Trudy.

Talking about his break from music and showbiz, Wayne Rostad said, "I’ve been staying out of the limelight, with very few exceptions. I took a sabbatical from music. I finally stopped to recharge the batteries.” Good thing, too. As you can imagine, decades of music work on top of TV work, MC work and charitable work took their toll. “For 50 years it was go, go, go. A lot of my work life was seven-days-a-week."

He certainly decided to part ways with singing but he says, “I didn’t realize that the songbird had stopped singing. But these affairs of the heart pluck strings you didn’t know existed. I started to write again and wanted to sing, too. I refurbished a couple of my guitars and so, after two-and-a-half years, the songbird came back,” he said.

Talking about his career of several successful decades, "I’ve been a storyteller in my heart for as long as I can remember,” he says now. He has also been a part of the national TV show 'On The Road Again' for years. Talking about the same, he said, "Television is an amazing thing. People have pretty sharp memories, and television really imprints on the mind. I found that as I travel around the country, people still come up to me and recognize me.”

Rostad shared that in his early 70s' he realized that he wanted to be a songwriter and performer. "I wanted to write about people in my own back yard, something which Country Report had given me an insight into . . . there are great songs right in our own back yard,” he said.

Talking about the love for his work, he said, "Whether I am emceeing an event, or whether I am singing a song, seeing the reaction on their face to some of the comedy that I do . . . anything that is a communion between me and the people is the joy. So that is my joy. My joy is at the end of the night, that we have almost had a kitchen ceilidh. A lot of laughs and a lot of loving exchanges and so whether I did that on television talking to a camera pointed at me, my job was to go through the lens, and through the lens into the other side, to the viewer watching.”

Rostad recalled how his father gifted him a guitar when he was young and asked him to respect it. He said that his father also told him that this guitar will bring him fortune.

“In my day, you had to go through the regular rank and file and find someone who believed in you, and then they had to find someone who would invest dollars in you. Today, you can post something online and it goes viral, and it’s a hit and companies come looking for you, but one thing that has never changed; don’t expect anything to come to you. You’re going to have to stick to it and only those who stick to it come out the other end," he said.

He concluded with a message for youngsters who wish to make their dreams come true and said, "If you believe in something enough, you’ll chase it and if you chase it and retain your integrity without stepping on anyone on the way up, then you don’t have to worry about coming down and meeting the people you stepped on. You want to have a career filled with giving and honesty and integrity and stick to it; if you do it long enough if it’s in the genes and it’s out there, it will come.”