Tim O’Neill of The O’Neill Brothers grew up in New Prague where he attended St. Wenceslaus and played the piano for Masses and other events. O’Neill gives credit to the Holy Spirit for bringing a piano into his life.
“The story is our dad, in 1960, bought our mom — as a first piece of furniture in their apartment — a piano, even though Dad never played the piano,” O’Neill told “Practicing Catholic” co-hosts Leah Heselton and Father Tom Margevicius. “Mom questioned (him). ‘Well, Bob, why did you buy this upright piano?’ And I think it was divine intervention clearly by the Holy Spirit. We started playing.”
All five O’Neill kids played the piano. Ryan, the other member of The O’Neill Brothers, stuck with playing the piano with Tim.
As a child, Tim O’Neill said he didn’t play little league baseball, something that many New Prague kids grew up doing. Instead, he was playing piano at church.
“(Baseball) is something that didn’t come naturally to me,” Tim O’Neill said. “The piano came easy for me. Those (are) gifts of the Holy Spirit. Some people are athletic, some have musical talent, some have both, some have neither, but whatever gifts you have is what makes us most joyful.”
Currently, Tim O’Neill runs The O’Neill Brothers Group in New Prague, helping others distribute their music. After graduating from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, he moved back into his parents’ basement and started his music business by giving piano lessons and playing at weddings.
“The first time that I recorded music was when I studied abroad in Austria, my sophomore year at Notre Dame,” Tim O’Neill said. “Before I left, Mom said, ‘Well, what am I going to do when you’re gone?’ So, the night before I left, in St. Wenceslaus, I brought the cassette recorder and recorded all of Mom’s favorite songs. I played them very peacefully and very simply, because it was literally the night before I left. While I was gone in Austria, Mom made copies of those cassettes for her bridge club friends and her Lady’s Auxiliary and the Queen of Peace Hospital. When I got back from Austria, I realized, well, maybe there’s an opportunity of sharing music.”
The O’Neill Brothers has over 5 billion streams in their 25-year music career.
To hear more from Tim O’Neill about the history of The O’Neill Brothers, listen to this episode of “Practicing Catholic,” which repeats at 1 p.m. Dec. 6 and 2 p.m. Dec. 7.
Produced by Relevant Radio and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, the latest show also includes an interview with Steven C. Anderson, a St. Paul-based musician, about his music career and his growing Catholic faith.
Listen to interviews after they have aired at archspm.org/faith-and-discipleship/practicing-catholic or choose a streaming platform at Spotify for Podcasters.
