“Growing up Osmond” was a reality for one Star Valley resident. But a visit with him was less about celebrities and more about faith, family and fortitude.

“I have always had a profound gratitude to be part of a family that has touched so many lives in the world in so many different ways,” Travis Osmond told this reporter. “I often look at the entertainers in today’s world, and they’re doing it for one purpose and that is for their wealth. I can tell you right now that was never a part of the Osmonds’ plan.

“There was never a show performed or a TV spot, never a stadium show done without there first being a prayer and dedicating a performance to God.”

The son of Merrill Osmond of the world-renowned Osmond Brothers, Travis Osmond met with SVI Media recently on a sunny January afternoon to relate how a performing Osmond came to head Lincoln County Weed and Pest, how the family has roots in the valley and what it was like to travel the United Kingdom last year on a farewell tour with his father.

It’s not hard to tell this 49-year-old is an Osmond. He has the same smile known around the world. What was harder to fathom — until talking with him — was how a bass guitar player with his musical heritage came to have a master’s degree in plant science and helps farmers and ranchers through Star Valley grow corn, hay and alfalfa. He was even an EMT with Star Valley Health for 11 years until retiring just last month.

“My grandpa and his brothers [George, Ralph and Rulon] were born and raised here in Star Valley,” Osmond said, explaining that the town of Osmond is named for the family. “Great-Great Grandpa [George Osmond] was sent here by Brigham Young. He spent his first winter here in a dugout at Swift Creek. He had a little farm down where Fairview is now.”

His grandson, also named George, would go on to meet the family matriarch, Olive, in Ogden, Utah. “And that’s where the Osmonds started,” Travis Osmond related. From those roots would come Travis’ well-known father and his uncles and aunt —  Virl, Tom, Alan, Wayne, Merrill, Jay, Donny, Marie and Jimmy. Travis Osmond is the oldest grandchild of the singing Osmonds.

“I was raised in a tour bus until I was eight years old,” Osmond said, recalling his childhood. Born in Provo, Utah, the family moved some 20 times. “People ask me, ‘Where are you from?’ That’s difficult to answer because I’ve lived everywhere, mainly Utah. My father and his brothers and sister were gone for 300-plus days of the year. We lived on the road.”

Despite the hardships of road life, there were fun memories — like jumping on a big, red bed owned by Elvis Presley at the Hilton in Las Vegas. “I remember he had this big, red bedspread, really thick. My cousin and I would just jump on that bed. It was so big and so fun.”

Merrill and Mary Osmond finally settled their family in Fairview, Utah, which Travis counts as his hometown and from where he left for a mission to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in 1995. After returning home, he attended Snow College in Ephraim, Utah, then Utah State University in Logan. He received a bachelor’s degree in agricultural education (2001) and a master’s degree in plant science (2003.) He is currently working on a doctorate in plant science from Utah State. And he always recalled summers helping his Uncle Rulon on his dairy near Freedom.

“It was always one of those places near and dear to my heart,” Osmond said, speaking of Star Valley.

In addition, he had a close relationship with Grandpa George Osmond who was always proud of being a “Wyoming cowboy.” When Travis was a boy, he’d go out with his grandfather in a 1979 yellow Chevy pickup on the Osmond farm in Avon, Utah, to change the water in the fields.

Those experiences instilled in Osmond a love for the land. In addition to his familial love of music. “Everything lined up in agricultural like everything lines up in music. You approach it very similarly.”

As an Osmond, he was introduced to music at a young age, beginning with the cello and progressing to piano, drums and his first love, the bass guitar. He recalled with a laugh how he received his first bass guitar, a black one, for Christmas when he was 11 years old. “My dad had kind of tucked it back [by the tree]. I saw the neck sticking out and I thought, ‘hallefreakinluhah!’ I picked that thing up, and I’ve never put it down since.”

It was playing the bass guitar during a concert with his father and uncles in Branson, Missouri, in 1991, when a teenage Travis learned a lesson in mercy. He was supposed to play a solo when he froze. He was so scared he couldn’t breathe. He thought afterward, “I had just blown it in front of all my uncles.”

But his father reassured him afterward that everyone makes mistakes. “Up to that point, I didn’t know mistakes were allowed. That changed my life.”

His dad, Osmond related, was tender and gentle. “They call him Bear, but when he spoke, he expected you to listen.”

And as an Osmond, you were also expected to have a good work ethic — something Travis and his wife, Maggon (pronounced Megan), have tried to instill in their teenage daughters, Cassidi and Clanci.  Maggon learned a work ethic on her family’s ranch in central Utah. Travis and Maggon met at Snow College. He saw her at a western line dance with red hair, wearing a green shirt and jeans. They formally met the following day and the rest, as they say, was history.

It was while living in Ephraim in 2011 where Osmond was teaching biology at Snow College and was an agronomist for IFA that a position opened as weed and pest supervisor in Star Valley. He jumped at the chance to raise his family in Star Valley — and put down his own roots. Although he is grateful for his musical family’s upbringing, he said, “I did not want to be on the road” with his own children. And he loved what he saw in the lives of farmers and ranchers.

“I call them real people,” Osmond related. “In Star Valley, you add another level onto that. I’ve seen farmers in warmer parts of the world do their hay and get four or five cuttings. Up here, they work just as hard, and they get one. Maybe one and a half. So, there’s an element of humility. [They say], ‘I have to rely more on the Savior for my blessings because I have 45 days to grow here where they have 120 days to grow in warmer parts of the country.’”

And in Grover where they live, Travis and Maggon Osmond have a little land of their own. “My girls have raised and shown steers at the fair. We have chickens, pigs and horses, dogs. We feed cows for a neighbor. It’s just what we do. There’s no patience at my house if you don’t get your chores done.”

But Osmond still keeps his fingers on a bass guitar for the family business — though maybe not as often as when he was a teenager or newly married. Over his lifetime, Osmond has performed with his father and uncles at thousands of venues, including Prince Albert Hall in London, at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, at Ricks College and at “tons of county fairs,” to name a few. As a boy, he also played the part of his Uncle Virl in the 1982 television movie about the Osmond family entitled, “Side by Side: The True Story of the Osmond Family.” The two oldest Osmond brothers are deaf, as is Travis Osmond’s brother, Justin.

All this instilled lessons Osmond learned from his childhood — including the pressure of being a good example. “With so many blessings comes responsibility,” he related. “The world is looking at you. The Osmonds stand for family. How are you going to do, Travis? How are you going to do your part as the oldest grandson to the singing Osmonds?

“There were lots of times my dad would knock me back in line with a look. Very few people know what that look looks like, but I know what it looks like.”

The pressure of being an Osmond included how the family handles adversity. Being famous did not exempt them from trials and heartache. In 2018, Travis’ younger brother, Troy, passed away unexpectantly from an undiagnosed condition. “Our lives came to a drastic stop. There are times when we have to really dig deep and ask ourselves what we are made of. The Savior suffered. He already felt that for you and I.”

Osmond said his father, when facing hardship, would say, “Tomorrow the sun will come out, and it’s going to be okay. It’s going to get better.”

Recently, the family lost the first of the singing Osmonds when Wayne died on Jan. 1. “I absolutely loved my Uncle Wayne,” Osmond said. “It’s been extremely hard. It was very hard on my dad. He stood next to Wayne for 65 years in the show business. He was the most incredible person. I could write books about Uncle Wayne’s faith and the way he approached life.”

In addition, Travis and Maggon have had their own challenges. “The Osmonds were a fruitful bunch,” Travis related, meaning lots of great-grandchildren for George and Olive. But Travis and Maggon were unable to have biological children — even after extensive fertility treatments. Their two daughters, born just eight months apart, are from the miracle of adoption.

“I knew there was something special there for Maggon and I. I knew we were going to do this somehow. I could not have written it better. I’m completely content to go to Clanci and Cassi and be their dad.”

Perhaps the way the Osmond family approached their work and their lives played a part in not only their own fortitude but also the faith they reflect. Travis Osmond said President David O. McKay of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints called the family as full-time missionaries in the late 1960s. They were released about 15 years ago formally by Church President Thomas S. Monson. Merrill Osmond keeps his release letter framed on his office wall.

“The only way my dad and my uncles and aunt made it was because they had a family. They had each other. They had a mission. They had a purpose. They had a great mom and dad. That organization was as tight as nails. They were a solid, tight unit.”

Even on tour, the Osmond family would still gather for family home evenings, with treats and scriptures. “It was always instilled by Grandpa and Grandma, and that’s what allowed them to keep their morals, their courage, their faith all because it was instilled by their mom and dad.”

Reflecting on his family legacy, Osmond related traveling with his father for Merrill Osmond’s farewell tour in the United Kingdom in 2024. They spent nights in such places as Manchester, London and Leeds. Travis Osmond described it was “very emotional, watching 60 years of professionalism come to an end, an era come to an end.”

When his dad broke into his famous tune, “Love Me for a Reason,” Osmond said he could see tears on audience members’ faces. That music, he added, is “going right into their soul and bringing back times that were happier for a lot of these people.”

Amidst perhaps thousands of letters the Osmond family has received is one Osmond won’t forget. One woman related how she was at the end of her rope and contemplating suicide when the words to “Love Me for a Reason” came to her mind. “It was God talking to me through your dad’s voice,” the woman wrote. She turned her life around and sent a photo of her children.

No matter who you are, Osmond told SVI, “we put our shoes on one shoe at a time” and each person has a unique life to live. “We each need to blossom in our own respective spheres and do our own thing. That’s all the Lord expects us to do.”

What does Travis Osmond hope for the next generation of Osmonds? With emotion, he replied, “What I want my kids to know about the Osmond family was they just did what they needed to do. They were good people, who the Lord needed them to do something different and that’s what they did. Use your talents that God gives you.”