Ice Capades Skater Thrills at 1st Show on Home Turf

It had to have been difficult for Angelique Gandy-Doud to realize, at age 8, that the hard, frigid substance she kept collapsing on--the stuff that was responsible for sending her home soaking wet--would one day be a source of income, fame and a husband.

“I remember falling down and getting wet a lot, “ said Gandy-Doud of her first trip to Anaheim’s Glacier Falls ice rink. “But I liked it. I had a great time. I started taking group lessons right after that.”

Now, 17 years later, she is about to come home for her first show in Orange County as a cast member of the Ice Capades.

She will appear with the show Oct. 24-26 at the Bren Events Center in Irvine, her first performance here in nearly seven years with the Ice Capades.

Gandy-Doud, from Garden Grove, joined the troupe at age 19 after spending years ascending the ranks of amateur skaters. She began by taking group lessons immediately after her dampened first effort on the ice, and finally attained the U.S. Figure Skating Assn.’s gold test level, the highest level to which an amateur can aspire and which all Olympic-class skaters must pass to qualify for competition in the Winter Games.

“When I was about 12,” she said, “I decided I was going to stick with it and finish all my levels. I aspired to the Olympics, but I guess I didn’t have what it took at the time to compete. And injuries got in the way. I had a back and ankle injury. They weren’t serious, but they’re the kinds of things that haunt you once in a while.”

But, she found, she was good enough to earn a spot in the Ice Capades. And, as a result, a spot in the heart of comic skater Brad Doud, to whom she has been married for more than two years.

The pair met and fell in love while the company was touring and Gandy-Doud was appearing as part of her husband-to-be’s act.

“The performance director picked four people to assist Brad in the act and one of the ones he picked was me,” Gandy-Doud said. “Brad wears a tuxedo and isn’t like a clown, and the act comes off at first like a regular act, but then things start to happen.”

The act simply unravels, she said, with each of the four female performers forced to leave the ice because of some catastrophe. Gandy-Doud is the last one off.

“I end up running away from him, yelling at him to get away, and I dive under the curtain to make my exit,” she said. “That’s when he asked me to marry him. He had to yell it three or four times before I finally heard him, but I never got the chance to answer him.”

Olympic gold medalist Scott Hamilton, who was starring in the show at the time, was scheduled to go on next, and carried Gandy-Doud’s answer out on the ice with him and told Brad Doud as they passed.

“Brad had the ring out there and everything,” said Gandy-Doud. “Everyone knew about it but me.”

Since their marriage, she said, the couple has been on the road for nine months each year.

“You have your good days and your bad (on the road),” she said. “I always hate packing my suitcase. But we’re buying a house in Las Vegas, and we’ll probably settle down there.”

For the time being, however, Gandy-Doud said she was excited to be coming home as a performer for the first time.

“Yes, very,” she said. “The show used to go to Anaheim before I joined it, and since I’ve been with it we’ve always gone to L.A. And my parents often fly out to see the opening or closing shows of the season, so they’ve seen their fair share of me. But coming to Irvine, in Orange County, this is my real home.”