Richard Goodall thanks fans: ‘You guys pulled through for me’

Goodall’s audition, filmed in Los Angeles in March, coincided with the school district’s spring break, so he made the trip without missing any work. But he was an immediate fan favorite, and his Golden Buzzer trip to the live rounds meant he’d have to miss a few weeks of work at the beginning of the school year.

Neighbors and fans rallied around him, starting a GoFundMe that raised nearly $20,000 and made it possible for Goodall’s fiancée, now wife, Angie Vanoven, to travel to Los Angeles as the competition continued. Throughout, he shared his adventures with friends and fans on social media, both to share the fun and be accountable for the money given to the GoFundMe.

“If you’ve watched my Facebook, I did my best to make sure that I’ve taken you all on this journey with us,” he said. “That’s exactly what it was used for, was for the trip and trying new things, doing new things.”

Together, Goodall and Vanoven did the Hollywood bus tours and strolled the Walk of Fame, taking pictures of some of their favorite stars’ stars (Patrick Swayze, Lionel Richie, Chuck Norris and, of course, Michael Bolton, just to name a few). It was a comfortable trip, he said.

But the couple were conservative with their spending, he stressed. Angie got her first manicure and pedicure ever during the trip, at a salon next to the laundromat where they washed their clothes during production breaks — they weren’t about to spend a few hundred dollars to have the hotel do the cleaning. There were nights when they went to Ralph’s, a subsidiary of Kroger, where Goodall used his Plus Card to buy lunch meat and bread and cottage cheese and Pepsi to stock their room’s mini fridge.