Jo Ann began playing the autoharp on Christmas Day in 1994 when she received an autoharp (a 21-chord ChromAharp) as a Christmas gift from her husband. When asked how she got started on the autoharp, Jo Ann shrugs and says, "Well, my second-grade music teacher had one. And I saw a documentary on TV about Maybelle Carter a long time ago. I just decided that I wanted an autoharp because I thought it would be a fun instrument to learn."

But what really got her going, she says, was a three-day autoharp workshop given by Bryan Bowers that she attended just prior to the Walnut Valley Festival in September of 1995. "It was like a whole new world opened up. I saw and heard things played on the autoharp that I never dreamed possible. After that, there was no looking back. I decided right then that I was going to learn to play this thing and play it well."

Jo Ann also has an album of her own, "Rhythm of the Rain", which features some of her best-known autoharp arrangements as well as some wonderful tunes with guitar, mandolin and bass accompaniment. This tasteful blend of instrumentals and vocals should be in every autoharp-lover's library. Jo Ann lives in Oklahoma with her husband of 25 years, David, and their three children. When she isn't playing the autoharp, she works as a Nuclear Medicine Technologist at her local medical facility.

In 1997, she entered the International Autoharp Championship at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, KS and made the top five finalists. She entered again in 1998, and once again made the top five finalists. In 1999, she won First Place. Jo Ann has also competed and won the Mountain Laurel Autoharp Championship in Newport PA, placing Third in 2002 and First in 2003.