Juell Kadet brought expertise in creative design and merchandising — and her aptitude in singing — to her role as a longtime executive at her family’s firm, Matteson-based Rogers & Hollands Jewelers.
Kadet was the public face of Rogers & Hollands. TV and radio audiences were well familiar with her voice. Kadet, an amateur nightclub singer who released two albums of older standards, famously sang the jewelry chain’s theme song for commercials, with its tagline “Rogers & Hollands, jewelry created, for now and forever.”
“Juell was one of the great leaders of our industry as it relates to not only marketing but merchandising, and she was very special in being at the forefront of all of the fashion that was going on on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis,” said Sheldon Gruber, an industry colleague who formerly headed the wholesale division at Harry Winston, which supplied diamonds and wedding bands to Rogers & Hollands.
Kadet, 96, died of Alzheimer’s disease on Nov. 9 at her Streeterville home, said her daughter Lori Stern, the executive vice president of merchandising at Rogers & Hollands. Kadet previously lived in Crete.
Born Juell Friedman in 1929 in Gary, Kadet was named not after her family’s business but after her grandfathers, both of whom were named Julius, she told the Tribune in 1992. She grew up in Gary, where she graduated from William A. Wirt High School.
While in high school, Kadet worked at her father’s store in East Chicago, Indiana. After attending Indiana University for a time and marrying her husband, Alan, in 1949 and starting a family, Kadet worked part time for the family business.
In the mid-1960s, Kadet wrote a column titled “Girl Talk” for the now-defunct Harvey Tribune newspaper in that south suburb, her daughter said. The column billed Kadet as a consultant who could help brides with plans, assist mothers with their problems, and answer questions about etiquette.
As Kadet’s children grew older, her involvement in the family business increased. Kadet’s husband, Alan, eventually rose to run the company, and once Kadet herself became involved in the business, she became the chain’s sole designer, with input into buying and merchandising decisions.
Kadet initially encountered some resistance within her industry, which at that time was overwhelmingly led by men. Little by little, she began doing business on the same level as her male peers.
“I’d done selling, buying, accounts receivable, window treatments,” Kadet told the Tribune in 1992. “Then Alan encouraged me to go into design.”
Kadet’s college training was in fine arts, and she drew on that training to design settings for her retail chain, ranging from earrings, brooches and pendants to women’s fashion rings. She even developed a line of one-of-a-kind pieces called Juell Kadet Originals. Kadet also played a role in building the company’s manufacturing capabilities.
“I love what I do,” Kadet told the Tribune in 1992. “Every day is a challenge to be better at what I do. I will try anything within reason. I never say ‘I can’t.’”
“She was a trailblazer in the business — she really was — and she really got women to get involved in what had been a male-dominated business,” Stern, Kadet’s daughter, said.
Kadet “knew her customer, and she was very keen on what they needed,” Gruber said.
While on a cruise with her husband in the early 1980s, Kadet felt a lump in her breast. She was diagnosed with breast cancer, underwent a mastectomy, and completed chemotherapy. After she prevailed over breast cancer, Kadet established the Kadet Cancer Research Foundation in 1990 at University of Chicago Medicine’s Ingalls Memorial Hospital, which has raised more than $1 million in support of oncology research.
Kadet’s love of singing started in a very low-key way. She hadn’t had lessons and, she told the Tribune in 1992, “I never even sang in the shower.” However, around 1980, her husband persuaded her to attempt jazz singing, and she began singing at a piano bar that her husband had found at a Holiday Inn in Chicago Heights.
“I was hooked. I went back every week until people thought I worked there,” Kadet told the Tribune in 1992.
Actual paid gigs ensued, including at New York’s Helmsley Palace, Chicago’s famous Pump Room and the now-closed Boombala on Chicago’s North Side.
“I gave all the money I made to the musicians or to charity,” she told the Tribune in 1992. “In my mind, if I didn’t keep the money, I was an amateur, and I didn’t have to be good.”
Kadet even cut two albums. Her first, “My Kind of Town,” was released in 1982, and she donated its $20,000 in proceeds to Chicago’s Families’ Fund. In 1989, she released her second album, “Juell of the Mile,” with proceeds benefiting cancer research, first through Michael Reese Hospital and later through the Kadet Cancer Research Foundation.
“When I’m up there I forget all my troubles,” Kadet told the Tribune in 1989, referring to singing onstage.
The Tribune in 1989 characterized Kadet as having a “sultry voice and easy style.”
The melody in the Rogers & Hollands advertising was taken from a song on Kadet’s first album.
Outside of work, Kadet enjoyed cooking, entertaining and volunteering her time by serving on the boards of the Ingalls Memorial Hospital Foundation, B’nai B’rith Women and the National Council on Jewish Women. With no shortage of style, she also cut a figure both in the office and at charitable events, colleagues said.
“She was the fashion plate of Chicago,” Gruber said.
Alan Kadet died in 2017. In addition to her daughter, Kadet is survived by another daughter, Marla Epton; a son, Rodger; six grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.
A private service is being planned.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.