
Transforming a Blended Family: Fred and Anita Von Canon’s Story of Redemption
On this episode of FamilyLife Today, hosts Dave and Ann Wilson join FamilyLife Blended podcast host Ron Deal for an inspiring conversation with Fred and Anita Von Canon. The Von Canons share their powerful story of overcoming family trauma, building a blended family, and the transformative role of the gospel in their marriage and parenting journey.

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About the Guest
Fred and Anita Von Canon
Fred and Anita have been married for 21 years. Theirs is a blended marriage. Fred brought three teenage kids into the marriage and they have added two daughters who are now teenagers. So their blended family is five kids and seven grandkids!
Their backgrounds are a little different. Fred came from a family who’s legacy, particularly around marriage, was a little different from Anita’s. Fred’s parents have 11 marriages and Anita’s parents have been married almost 56 years.
When Anita isn’t playing ringmaster to their circus, she’s helping at school, tutoring math, or leading bible and prayer groups.
Fred’s time is split between running a business, being an active investor in a restaurant, and now running for the North Carolina state legislature.

Ron Deal
Ron L. Deal is one of the most widely read and viewed experts on blended families in the country. He is Director of FamilyLife Blended® for FamilyLife®, founder of Smart Stepfamilies™, and the author and Consulting Editor of the Smart Stepfamily Series of books including the bestselling Building Love Together in Blended Families: The 5 Love Languages® and Becoming Stepfamily Smart (with Dr. Gary Chapman), The Smart Stepfamily: 7 Steps to a Healthy Family, and Preparing to Blend. Ron is a licensed marriage and family therapist, popular conference speaker, and host of the FamilyLife Blended podcast. He and his wife, Nan, have three sons and live in Little Rock, Arkansas. Learn more at FamilyLife.com/blended.
Episode Transcript
FamilyLife Today® with Dave and Ann Wilson – Web Version Transcript
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Transforming a Blended Family: Fred and Anita Von Canon’s Story
Guests:Ron Deal and Fred and Anita Von Canon
From the series:Transforming a Blended Family: Fred and Anita Von Canon’s Story
(Day 1 of 1)
Air date:January 21, 2025
Fred: I talked about being poor. We didn’t celebrate birthdays—there was nothing—no presents; no nothing. We didn’t have Christmas; we didn’t have anything like that. So to then get married—and go into someone’s [family,] where those traditions and all that, is very important—it took a little coming around to it, and not because I didn’t want to, just because that was so unnatural, which again, that was my normal.
Dave:Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Dave Wilson.
Ann: And I’m Ann Wilson. And you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.
Ann: So Dave, your dad was married twice. What do you think life would’ve looked like had he been married six or seven times?
Dave:Are you serious?!
Ann: Because I know how complicated it was just having your mom and your stepmom, but can you imagine?
Dave:No, I cannot even fathom; it was complex with two. I know that’s how it happens for some people. In fact, today’s show is going to be an interesting one. We have Ron Deal, our director of blended family here at Family Life, talking to some of our friends—
Ann: —good friends.
Dave: —Fred and Anita Von Cannon—who we’ve been friends with for years. I didn’t know half of their background.
Ann: —like crazy kind of stuff. You’re in store for a dramatic story today.
Dave:Yeah; so here’s a little bit of their background. Fred and Anita had been married 22 years. Fred had three kids before they got married; and then, they had two more together. The ages of their kids are from 42 all the way down to 19.
Ann: And then, Anita’s parents were married 56 years before her mom passed away. Fred’s parents, on the other hand, experienced many transitions, in and out of marriage. His dad was married—listen to this—eight times and his mom three times.
Dave:And I think one time Fred mentioned that in a passing comment.
Ann: Yeah; we’re like, “What?!”
Dave:And knowing them, and watching their life and their ministry, I would’ve never guessed. And then, on top of that, one of Fred’s stepmom’s committed suicide; and one of his stepdads was murdered by his mom’s lover.
Ann: It’s like a movie; it’s so sad.
Dave:Well, that’s sort of just sort of the beginning; and you’re going to hear more as you listen. So let’s start here: at one point, Ron Deal asked Fred about his now-adult perspective on his childhood. And so we’re going to pick it up right there.
[FamilyLife Blended® Podcast]
Fred: No matter how you grow up; honestly—if you grow up the Cleavers [Leave It to Beaver] or you grow up like we did—no matter how you grow up, when you’re in it, that’s your normal. I mean, everything else is abnormal; you’re the normal. You just have a frame of reference of you because that’s all you know. And then, as you get a little older—and that could be ten, or it could be thirty—as you’re looking back on things, and going, “Huh”; that type of thing—so as you have more perspective, and you have more time, and more layers of the onion to peel back in trying to understand: “What?” “Why?” and all that type of thing. But when you’re going through it, it’s your normal; as crazy as it may be, it’s still your normal.
Ron: So Fred, let’s just go back to the beginning, whatever that is for you. What do you remember about your family, first, and just walk us down that road.
Fred: Well, as a kid, we moved a lot—always moving, always getting used to a new place and new people—and then, moving again. I always say we moved a lot at night. My dad wasn’t the greatest at taking care of—he left, in some cases—because he may have owed somebody something or he may have slept with their wife or something. There was just situations where we would get, at about dinner time, we would get a U-Haul, and pack it up; and be gone by the time it got light. Again, as a kid, I didn’t think anything about it—I just assumed that’s how everybody moved—not really the case, as it turns out.
But when we were growing up—it’s stuff that you look back on now—that seems a little crazy. We had situations where we would be—even though we had our mom; and then, seven stepmoms we had along the way—there was never really that much time where it felt like we had a stepmom around. Our mom and dad were split when we were—I have a brother who’s a year older; a brother who’s a year younger—so we were two, three, and four; or one, two, and three—we were basically really small, so we don’t remember her until, now, later in life. But the stepmom’s would come in for maybe—feels like just a few months at a time—and then, they’d be gone. Most of the time/a lot of the time, it was just growing up with my dad, who was a very—”his way or the highway”—very strong disciplinarian. We got literally a belt whipping pretty much every day of our life. That was something, again, I just assumed every other kid did.
But he would always be traveling; he would want to go somewhere, so he’d leave. We have a half-brother; we have lots of half-brothers and sisters, as you might imagine. We had a half-brother who came and stayed with us a few summers when we were eight, nine, ten, eleven. There would be four boys there and him, and he would take off and go to Missouri. We lived in Southwest Virginia at the time, and he would go to Missouri for a couple weeks. He would leave us there for a couple weeks on our own. And then, he got to where he would take two of us with him and leave two of us at home.
We had 300 acres, a bunch of cattle. We had chores that we did every morning for an hour/hour and a half. And then, in the evening, when we got home from school—and we were on dirt roads forever; it was about an hour school-bus ride—and so when we get home, we’d do our chores. We would be on our own for a couple of weeks at a time when we were nine and ten years old.
Ron: Wow; let me slow down just a little bit there. You’re a young kid, and you’ve got a younger brother. Sometimes, there’s somebody older who’s there with you; sometimes, there’s not. How did that go? Who took care of whom, and how did life work when you guys were left alone?
Fred: Well, for the most part, we just—as you can imagine what nine- and ten-year-old boys would do to a house in a couple weeks—but we always knew when he was coming home; he had it set. And this isn’t cell-phone era, so we just had to kind of remember when: “Oh, he’s coming home Thursday,”—or whatever. We’d spend that whole day before trying to clean up the mess that we’d made for a couple of weeks.
But again, it was just weird; we didn’t think much about it being abnormal, because it’s just what we knew. He left us enough food and food for the animals, and so we just went through the same routine we would do if he was there or not. So that allowed us—if that’s one way to look at it—or required us to grow up a lot quicker than most, and not in a way that I think kids today are being pushed into growing up in a sexual way. We grew up in just a maturity/responsibility way.
It was different. We fought all the time, so he’d come back and there would be something broken or whatever. My little brother was slower than I thought he was. We had an old TV; and I had a shooter marble I was throwing at him, and I let into him too much and threw it through the TV. So Dad came back one time, and our old black and white TV had a hole through it. So there’s always stuff like that, but that might’ve been the case if he was there too. It didn’t feel like that much different; we didn’t think anything about it being different.
When he would want to go, there was one time, I don’t know if I told you this story, he was trying to get to where he could go and be without any of us to kind of free up and go for a little bit of a time. And he was always forever picking up hitchhikers. And in that era—we’re talking about in the ‘70s—that wasn’t really that abnormal. A lot of people would pick up hitchhikers, and a lot of people would hitchhike. He picked up a couple of guys; befriended them. They wound up staying with us. He thought, “This is a perfect situation.” He took off for a few weeks; and we had the hitchhikers who were the adult supervision for a few weeks. We wound up—
Ron: Were they reliable, dependable? Did they take good care of you guys?
Fred: No, they kind of partied the whole time; and we wound up sleeping out in the barn, because they kicked us out of the house.
[Studio]
Ann: This is an unbelievable story. You’re listening to FamilyLife Today. We’re listening to just a portion of the FamilyLife Blended podcast with Ron Deal and guests Fred and Anita Von Canon, who are good friends of ours. I didn’t know this story!
Dave:I mean, you’re laughing; but you’re not laughing.
Ann: I’m shocked!
Dave:You’re sort of shocked; I mean, who leaves their kids with hitchhikers?!
Ann: [The father] just met them.
Dave:So you don’t even know that, probably—oh, my goodness.
Ann: How, as a child, do you even make sense of that?
Dave:You don’t. But here’s what’s even crazier: Fred goes on to share how, at age 19, he got married; but didn’t have any idea what marriage was, how to do it, or what the purpose was. So he thought, “If this doesn’t work out, then I’ll just get out.”
Ann: Because he’d never seen anything different.
Dave:That’s what his dad had done all those years. So he had an excuse to divorce. They had three children, and the marriage ended. Fred was devastated and wrecked by it, and he wasn’t sure he’d ever marry again.
Ann: But he did. So let’s pick up the conversation with Ron asking Fred and Anita about how their different family backgrounds came together.
Dave:And by the way, this is Episode 99 of the FamilyLife Blended podcast with Ron Deal. We’re going to hear him talk with Fred and Anita.
[FamilyLife Blended Podcast]
Ron: I’d love to hear from both of you: “What are some of those things you’ve learned—life has taught you guys—that makes for good marriage, good family, and commitment?” I want to start with that because, Fred, you were noting how, obviously, commitment was not something you saw demonstrated by your father. And so your first relationship/first marriage, you sort of had that in the back of your mind: “Well, if this doesn’t work out, there’s always something else.” What would commitment say to that attitude?
Anita:That’s not going to work for committed marriage; that’s not going to be a good foundation or a reference point. I think that’s part of our story, too, is I come in with a completely different background. Not only have my parents been married for almost 56 years, but they still live in the house that I came home from the hospital in 47 years ago. It couldn’t be two more different perspectives that we came from.
Even just sitting here, thinking, “What did I implicitly learn just from growing up in that house?” I think, honestly, one of the things I see for us is, obviously, there’s the marriage. But even more so to me is family—and just how I grew up with a brother in a two-parent, white-picket fence kind of house; and cousins, and aunts and uncles, grandmas—and everybody in close proximity and getting together for holidays in a very traditions-based family. There’s things that just—they happen every year—because they happen every year.
That was also something that wasn’t modeled for Fred and was not a part of the picture, growing up; and what do birthdays look like?—and holidays?—and all of that. He could tell you stories that are different than mine. And so then, going forward into the: “Okay, so what’s it going to look like now?”—the five kids now, even different than the first three.
Ron: Anita, let me just follow up real quick. There’s a lot of people listening right now, who are in your shoes. They didn’t grow up in a blended family, but they married into one; and they married into complexity. They instantly became a stepparent, like you did; you married a man, who has extended family. I don’t even know how many people we could count—half-brothers; whatever the case is—Fred said neither does he.
Fred: Neither do I.
Ron: And so what adjustment did you have to make, stepping into that complexity?
Anita:I think just to be willing to adjust and to welcome everybody. I think it’s really interesting—I know this is all about FamilyLife Blended, and growing up blended—but I think, not only that we all have that story—we all have a background—but just who we are. We have two different stories, growing up; but we’re still both, as adults, very relational people. We both really see people and [get to] know people quickly. I think that’s something—we’re both very open people—one of us extroverted; one of us in a more introverted fashion. But I would think that people would say our home, now, is an open-door policy. And part of that was by design for the children to always feel welcome, to always have a place in our home, even though they never grew up in our place. I mean, when we got married, only one of them lived with us, full time.
Ron: Only one of your stepchildren lived full-time?
Anita:We got married; and the youngest, Leslie, was starting high school. The middle, stayed with his mom for a while to finish out high school where he was. And then, the oldest was already off to college. [They were] already almost at launching points, but wanting them [to know] that I wanted them, as the mother of our home, to know there was a place for them. And so the door was always open; and there’s a lot of people, not just them, who would say that this is a place where the door is always open.
Fred: That’s something I would say that I didn’t expect at all. And even when it was happening, I was probably a little resistant to it—maybe, more than a little—but what she’s talking about is so true. [In my growing up,] we never had this concept of family other than just us boys; that was it. Because there was just no—my dad was the youngest by far—and so all of our cousins lived—
Anita:[His dad] was a blended family.
Fred: —lived a long ways away. We just didn’t know any of our family. And then, we didn’t have—I talked about being poor—we didn’t celebrate birthdays; there was nothing—no presents; no nothing. We didn’t have Christmas; we didn’t have anything like that. So to then get married— and go into someone’s [family,] where those traditions and all that, is very important—it took a little coming around to it, and not because I didn’t want to, just because that was so unnatural, which again, that was my normal. I’m the one who’s abnormal, and the rest of the world is; but I still had to kind of come around to it. And she’s done an unbelievable job of normalizing, and house-breaking me and my family, to a large degree.
You said it earlier when you talked about rules—that’s perfect—because there are kind of just basic rules for things. If you’ve never been taught those rules—we were taught certain rules: “If you don’t do what I tell you, you’re going to get a whipping,” kind of stuff—we were taught those type of very [action-related] rules. But like rules for life, I couldn’t tell you any that we learned, growing up; so we had to learn them, which comes with a lot of pain and suffering. We had to learn them on our own. That’s the thing that I will forever be grateful of FamilyLife is when—I think November, October, November/November, late October of 2014—it was the fall of 2014, we attended an Art of Marriage that Chris and Mary Herndon led in Greensboro. It was attached to a C-12, a business conference; and so we tacked on this. We thought, “Yeah, let’s do that.” We were there with another couple, and they wanted to do it; so we stayed there and did it.
That whole day and a half that we did this Art of Marriage—there’s six sessions—we went through them. I can’t even tell you how many times that just hearing something that is so basic, and so “Duh!”—but hearing somebody tell me the rules for the first time—now, it doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t have figured out a lot of these rules on my own and did. And we’ve been married for 20 years, and I think the rules have been pretty good; but I’m just saying it was so impactful—so literally life-changing, impactful—to hear all those people talk about just simple biblical truths, and how they relate to marriage, was literally the biggest game-changer weekend in my life.
As it turns out, we get home on Monday morning; we get the call that my dad had passed away.
[Studio]
Dave:Wow! This story never ends. You’re listening to FamilyLife Today, and we’ve been listening to a portion of an interview that Ron Deal, our Director of FamilyLife Blended had with Fred and Anita Von Canon. It’s just one of these crazy stories. And now, we have Ron in the studio with us. We get to get your perspective. Ron, you could hear the emotion in Fred’s voice there as a product/a resource that we, here at FamilyLife, made years ago. I remember when Ann and I sat down to be interviewed for the Art of Marriage, had no thought of people, like Fred and Anita, will be impacted by this. So talk about the lessons learned from this interview.
Ron: Well, they, to me, are a good illustration of God’s redemption in people’s lives. Ann expressed well the shock over their story; these are people you know. And if you met them—and you guys have met them many times and spent time with them—and you wouldn’t have guessed any of that hard, difficult background to their life because what you see are capable, strong, competent people.
Ann: Successful.
Ron: Yes, in so many ways. And of course, that’s what we have on the outside because that’s who they have become. But life started hard for Fred. Now, Anita had a strong, stable, healthy family environment; and she married a guy who came from—“Nobody ever said that commitment mattered,”—and he just didn’t even know the elementary blueprint principles about how to do relationships. But God grew him up—and their marriage/their blended family: the two kids that they added to his three—they have done a fabulous job in their home, and they are changing other people’s lives. You and I both know how vested they are in helping other people find the good news about how to do marriage and family if founded in the gospel. And they’re impacting tons of people: taking people on our cruise every year; sponsoring their own church activities. Nan and I are going to be speaking at their church, coming up, doing a Mindful Marriage conference in the spring of 2025. They are after it—going after it—because they’ve finally seen: “Oh, this is what it means to change a life”; and they’re a living example of that.
Dave:And I mean, we’ve done that conference at their church. We did a Vertical Marriage there a couple years ago. It’s such a great reminder of: “It’s not how you start; it’s how you finish.”
Ron: There you go.
Dave:And if you look at—especially, Fred’s start; my start—it’s like you would not predict good things for their future. No counselor, looking at their family history, would think, “This one’s going to work out.” And yet, that’s the radically-transforming power of the gospel and the Holy Spirit of God entering Fred and Anita’s marriage. We’ve spent time in their home and met their kids. And again, you can’t connect who they are now with who they were; but that’s what Jesus does. It’s such a powerful story. And I believe this is what you do every day, Ron. This is what He wants to do in all of us.
Ron: Yeah, it’s a lot of fun for me to get to tell these stories; because I want the world to know. I want our listeners, right now, to know that—whatever your story is—God can work with it. He’s really good at taking imperfect people and working out His perfect principles in their lives to bring about His good purposes. I’m a living example of that. Nan and I have had difficulty in our life/in our marriage. We’ve struggled with grief, and sorrow, and sadness, and pain, and difficulty in how we’ve treated one another. That’s part of our story that we’re telling in the book, The Mindful Marriage, at this season of our life. We’re living examples of that. It is so fun to be around redemptive/redeemed people because—“Why?”—aren’t they the greatest people in the world? Because they are so grateful for mercy, and they’re not walking in arrogance at all; they have been brought to their knees. I have been brought to my knees. These are the kind of people you want to be around. This is who the church is, and it’s who we should try to strive to be.
Ann: I think what happened to Fred is: he’d never seen a picture of what a godly marriage could look like—a marriage built on the foundation of Jesus—so when he saw that, I think his mind was blown. I think that’s why he puts on these conferences; he wants as many people to know: “This is how God can change a legacy.” I had heard the gospel for the first time in my life was when I was 16. All I wanted to do is tell everybody, like, “How have I never heard this? This is mind blowing. I need to tell as many people as I can.” And that really is Fred and Anita’s passion: “We want people to know the unfathomable grace of the gospel.”
Ron: Yes; and of course, that’s something we’re very invested in here, at FamilyLife, is people like them helping you, the listener, go the next step to impact your corner of the world. There’s somebody around you that you have a good word to share with them. When God opens that door, step through it and share something with them. Maybe it’s a word—something you’ve learned; something you’re learning in your life—or maybe it’s a resource; maybe it’s a tool. Maybe you talk to a pastor, and you say, “Hey, can we do one of these events? I don’t even know what that means or how we go about it,”—reach out to us here, at FamilyLife; this is something we’re good at. We help churches take that step. I know, at FamilyLife Blended, we’re specifically trying to help churches understand blended families and how they can minister to them. We want to help you do this.
Dave:I would just encourage you—as you’ve heard Fred and Anita’s story—don’t hide your pain. They didn’t hide their pain; Ron and Nan are not hiding their pain in their book. We haven’t hid ours; it’s where God meets us in that pain. And then, here’s the greatest thing—He meets others in their pain that’s similar to your pain—it’s a beautiful thing that He does. He meets you; and then, He says, “With the comfort, I’ve comforted you, I want you to take that to others.” And that’s what Fred and Anita are doing. I think that’s what God wants to do in and through you as well.
Dave: What a great conversation with Ron Deal. And let us tell you: there is a great event that Ron puts on called Blended & Blessed® that you want to be a part of. It’s a one-day, one-event: “A Lifetime of Change for Your Blended Family”. And this year, it’s April 5; it’s live in Franklin, Tennessee; but you can also livestream it anywhere you are. It’s going to be livestreamed all around the world.
Ann: Oh, I like what the topic is about, too; it’s about overcoming pain and behaviors that sabotage blended-family relationships. Everybody needs that. Ron and Nan are going to share their personal story, which is pretty incredible, and help you learn how you can overcome destructive cycles in your marriage.
Dave:So here’s how you get signed up: go to our BlendedAndBlessed.com—BlendedAndBlessed.com—you can sign up there. It’s a life-changing event.
Ann: We’ll see you next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today.
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