Words by Esther Young
In third grade, Shannon Haley made her most vivid feelings known in songs she wrote on piano and guitar. As a teen, she developed a big, operatic voice—and a morning ritual of singing along to the country radio station 95.3 KRTY before school. She ended her days rehearsing rigorously with Los Altos High School’s elite choir, the Main Street Singers.
In perfect harmony, just one town over in Palo Alto, Ryan Michaels absorbed songwriting inspiration from his dad, a pedal steel guitarist. Growing up in his family’s Sunnyvale music store where his parents worked, music and soccer were the only two things that mattered to him. During his teen years, he flunked out of one local high school after another, until Ryan got to Mid-Peninsula High. His guidance counselor, Heidi Scheissler, took notice of the solo trips he was making to Nashville. She submitted his songs to be graded as English projects, which enabled him to graduate early and win a full-ride soccer scholarship to Nashville’s Belmont University, a school known for its music business program.
Meanwhile, Shannon took a full-ride scholarship as an opera major at UCLA. Throughout the week, she focused on repertoire and performance. But on the weekends, she went to country bars to play her own songs. Slowly, she realized the dream driving her wasn’t singing opera at the Met. It was songwriting. Seeking a like-minded community, she started taking trips to Nashville and recorded her first demos. A friend advised her to connect with a guy there who “knew everybody.”
A few years earlier, Ryan had started a rock band that was touring nationally. He had made a name for himself, but not just in music. Having gone to countless open houses while watching his parents manage investment properties, he had developed a keen interest in real estate. Ryan obtained a real estate license and earned a reputation in Nashville circles. He was juggling both business and creative pursuits when he got a Facebook message from Shannon, asking to connect.
As Ryan describes their coffee shop meeting, “I walked in, Shannon’s sitting there and that was it.” He knew they would get married. While Shannon was a few dates away from reaching the same conclusion, both recognized that they had serious musical chemistry. “I believed in our musical connection so much that I just didn’t want both things to fall apart because we were trying to do both,” she shares. Ryan invited her to perform a song with his band at the Roxy Theatre that weekend in Los Angeles.
“When she came out to do one song with me, no one in the audience wanted to see the band anymore,” Ryan laughs. “They just wanted that: the duo.”
Instinctively, Shannon sent her producer the first song she and Ryan wrote together. Ironically, “The Price I Pay” was a breakup song, but it blended their styles perfectly. Each of their managers and producers agreed that this duo was written in the stars, but it took years to refine their sound. For their first few collaborations, they were still two separate artists singing together. “You really have to, as an artist, shed yourself,” Ryan explains, “and prioritize your artistry in this group.” Their art eventually evolved as they did—from lyrics that felt like watered-down versions of their personalities to bodies of work that truly reflected them both. These days, their synergy on stage is undeniable. It’s in the way they meet each other’s eyes while singing and the way they sway in tandem as they strum their guitars. As they found their rhythm, they caught the attention of Danny Strick, then the co-president of Sony/ATV Music Publishing, and he opened a record label for Haley & Michaels.
Ryan and Shannon got married in 2015 at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga. They compiled clips of their wedding ceremony into a music video for “Giving It All (To You),” a hit single they later played live for co-host Hoda Kotb on the Today Show. Their sweetest surprise was hearing the song on a radio in a tiki bar during their Hawaii honeymoon.
Navigating the music industry and its hurdles, they charted an independent route. They produced other artists, including father-daughter duo Mat and Savannah Shaw, whose Christmas album hit No. 1 on Billboard. Haley & Michaels also released their single “Hail Mary,” which was featured in the Netflix film Walk. Ride. Rodeo. and its music video was produced by the San Francisco 49ers and shot at Levi’s Stadium. The couple traveled to 200 cities as they promoted their first full-length album and played shows across Europe and the U.S.
When the pandemic started, they were in England opening for the likes of Darius Rucker and Eric Church. The pandemic shutdown hit while they were at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. When they finally arrived home in Nashville, it gave them time to think. “We were just so in the grind,” Shannon remembers. “If you lose perspective—even the notion that it is possible to do something else—there is no time for that.”
Later that same fateful year, the couple had their first child, Keira, welcoming her into the world with “Born Yesterday,” a sweet song that features their baby’s heartbeat while still in the womb. Two years later, little Liam followed. “Having [children] didn’t change our love of music or our desire to play concerts,” Ryan says, “but it became so easy to let go of so many things and reprioritize.” They decided that being closer to their family was most important.
Back in the Bay Area, Shannon and Ryan are among their family and childhood friends. They enjoy their favorite spots: strolling Saratoga’s Hakone Gardens on holidays, enjoying dinners at Hobee’s or an upscale evening at La Forêt in San Jose, and bringing the kids to Linden Tree Books in Los Altos, a place Shannon loved as a child.
Ryan joined The Agency, a boutique real estate and lifestyle company. “Helping people, that’s the point of our music,” he says, “and you can also do that by helping people get into their homes.” His new Los Altos office on Main Street is just blocks away from The Post, where—years before they met—Ryan and Shannon had each sat at the bar, watching halftime shows, not realizing that one day, they would be the ones performing in a stadium.