Aug 8, 2017 By Harry Funk 3 min read

Mt. Washington’s scenic Shiloh Inn provided the sights for their first date, with sounds to be provided by esteemed Pittsburgh pianist Scott Anderson.

That gave Bethel Park resident Mary Kaczorowski an idea.

“I had my little index cards with me, with the words, and I was going to impress this guy I was meeting,” she said about her future husband, Ted. “I asked Scott if I could sing a couple of songs, and I sang ‘I’ve Got a Crush On You.’

“So that was the first impression my husband had of me, that I was a jazz singer.”

Mary always had a bit of chanteuse in her – “I was like a lot of other kids, with the hairbrush in the room, singing Carole King” – but public displays of her vocal talents were relatively few and far between.

Ted wanted her to change that, for the better.

“He kept saying, ‘You need to be singing. You need to be singing.'”

And so she is, as part of a duo with guitarist Cal Robol, a Peters Township resident and Bethel Park High School graduate. For three years, they’ve been entertaining audiences with a repertoire varying from the standards of the Great American Songbook to tunes of the 21st century.

You can catch them at 7 p.m. Aug. 10 as part of Mt. Lebanon Public Library’s Concert in the Courtyard Series, then at the same time the following evening at Jackson’s Restaurant in Cecil Township.

Mary and Cal met through a craigslist ad he posted when, after a long layoff from performing, he decided to give the guitar another go.

“For seven or eight years, maybe, I don’t even know if I picked it up,” he said, citing the time-tested precedent of first-time fathers who have more important matters than music. By the time his second son arrived, though, wife Jen was happy to have Cal start honing his chops once more.

He opted for a more laid-back approach than the rock bands of his younger days.

“I wanted to just get into playing gigs that wouldn’t require being out until 4 in the morning,” he explained.

A jazz fan since his days of earning a music education degree at Duquesne University, he quickly found that his playing style was a fine complement for Mary’s singing.

Some of their favorite venues are retirement communities, where the audience members can be especially attentive and appreciative.

“They’ll come up to me and say, ‘I remember dancing to that with my husband,'” Mary said. “The music takes them to a different place in their lives, and I think that’s the most rewarding thing for me, personally.”

Along with songs from way back, she and Cal enjoy playing soft-rock favorites from the ’60s and ’70s, particularly ones on which they can harmonize vocally.

Mary has taken voice lessons for many years, including from the late Pittsburgh icon Maureen Budway, and really had her interest in music piqued while working for the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank.

“I was in charge of the Pittsburgh Blues Festival,” she said about the annual event that the food bank sponsored for 21 years. “I think that kind of sparked my interest in music again, because I got to meet all these great artists.”

And then she met Ted Kaczorowski:

“He’s my biggest fan and promoter.”

Visit www.facebook.com/maryandcal for more information.