ILONA SAARI
RIGHT: ANNA & BILL WAGNER
ANNA & BILL
WAGNER
ANNA SINGING
“Love is friendship set to music.” Jackson Pollock
Anna Cho was born in Culver City, California, the former home of MGM Studios, the magical movie lot that housed “more stars than in heaven,” but she was raised, along with her younger sister, Irene, in Walnut, a suburb of L.A. County. Anna’s dad, Samuel Cho, a graduate in foreign languages from a university in Korea, found work in the U.S. outside his field of expertise at a machinery factory. Her mom, Charlene, who had studied accounting and vocal performance in Korea, worked to put her husband through community college and later had a career in administration 12
OM — April 2021
for a Korean supermarket. Both parents loved to sing and they passed that love on to their girls. Anna spent a majority of her youth studying piano (“which I hated!”) and singing in many choirs (“which I loved!”). Most of the family’s singing was done in church. “I loved singing in group settings because of the blended harmonies, shared emotions, and, since I’m an introvert, not standing out,” claims this Ojai standout.
Bill Wagner, the son of Dorothy and John Wagner, was born in Illinois, but grew up in star-studded Hollywood not far down yellow brick road from MGM in Culver City. He
