This just in: Don Shelby and Nancy Nelson exchange 'Love Letters' onstage

Playwright A.R. Gurney's stage directions for "Love Letters" are that the lines should be delivered flat. Try telling that to legendary news anchors Nancy Nelson and Don Shelby, who found post-television careers in theater and have teamed up to do the show in Chanhassen.

A former Miss Minnesota, Nelson was inducted into the Broadcast Hall of Fame after a 45-year career in news, talk radio and infomercials. The Walter Cronkite of the Twin Cities, Shelby spent 32 of his 55 years in news at WCCO-TV, becoming a household name.

For both retirees, who have known each other professionally and personally for more than four decades, "Love Letters" is freighted with meaning. The show marks Shelby's return to the stage after suffering a series of strokes in July 2021 that left him speaking gibberish. Two months later he underwent an open-heart surgery. His recovery on both scores surprised even his doctors. Shelby was not supposed to speak again.

"But I'm a stubborn bastard," he said.

For Nelson, just talking about the show brings tears. She performed it alongside her now deceased husband, longtime WCCO-TV anchor Bill Carlson, in two productions at the Old Log Theatre. There are lines she can still hear him delivering.

"There's the play and then there are those memories, so it's quite emotional for me," Nelson said.

Director Michael Brindisi previously staged "Love Letters" with stage veterans Alan Hamilton and Susan Long, David Anders and Susan Goeppinger of "I Do! I Do!" fame, and "Happy Days" matriarch Marion Ross alongside her real-life partner Paul Michael.

The Star Tribune caught up with Shelby, who plays Andrew Makepeace Ladd III, and Nelson, who is Melissa Gardner, recently over coffee at Chanhassen. The chat has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: The characters have a 50-year history. How long do you two go back?
Nelson: Billy and Don were in the same newsroom. You came in what — '78? [Shelby nods.] From '78 to 2008. Billy and Don knew each other very well. After Billy passed, Don called me right away and was one of the first through the door. Spoke at Billy's memorial. And, of course, he reported it on the news.

Q: How do you define Melissa and Andrew's relationship?
Shelby: The whole thing starts when they're 8. It's a great roller coaster as they bicker and fight. He's always correcting the way she writes. It's a very deep friendship which may or may not turn into something else.

Nelson: The really sweet part is how they grow from children to adolescents, then they're dating [other people], they're married. She's very brittle. He's buttoned-up. Fifty years later, they realize that they were the only constants in each other's lives. Although they never end up together, they love one another more than anyone else in their lives.

Q: She's an artist and he's a Yale man groomed to be a senator. What binds them?
Shelby: Somehow, he's her lifeline. It takes a little while to recognize that he sees her as his lifeline.

Q: After a career in news, are there challenges in acting in theater that are unique to your background?
Shelby: When you're a television personality who has been in people's homes as Don Shelby, it takes an inordinate amount of time for them to stop seeing Don Shelby [onstage] no matter what character you're playing. I think enough time has passed that the audience will be willing to allow themselves to suspend their belief.

Nelson: Let's not forget that he broke that mold. Don leaves the anchor desk and plays in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" in his platform [shoes] and turns around and can't wait to show the audience part of his butt. Any ideas they had about, "Oh, this is Don Shelby," went whoop!

Shelby: Don Shelby shows his ass — literally.

Nelson: Yes, it was a moment.

Q: Does the show cause you to reflect on your mortality?
Nelson: We're grateful that Don can do it. Whatever they told you, he's too determined a son-of-a-bitch to believe them. Tell him the things they said.

Nelson: For two months after Don's stroke, he could not form one word.

Shelby: I'm back and still working. One of the things you have to do as an on-field reporter is read what you wrote and memorize it. During the first three weeks after my stroke, the temporal lobe for the speech center — it was dead. But I could recite Shakespeare. So, I went to my speech therapist and tried to wow her with this speech from "Henry V." And she just went, "That's pretty common. Alzheimer's patients can't recognize their children but they can sing old fight songs." There are pathways in the brain that are formed so you know what word is coming next. Your brain doesn't have to go searching for it. But I've had to re-learn how to make all my consonants and vowels.

Nelson: God works in mysterious ways. It took a stroke to finally shut Don Shelby up.

Shelby: When I heard that, it was the first time I laughed in two months. I laughed even harder when another friend wrote me an email and said, "Shelby, if you die, can I have your [expletive]?"