Rachel Westing is Keith Partridge's girlfriend.
Background[]
Rachel has been out of the country for a while and has never heard of the Partridge Family. She is a cellist and a classical music fan, and Keith likes her because she's serious.
On the series[]
Keith introduces Rachel to his family and plays her a recording of I Think I Love You. Rachel says that it's not her kind of music and deems it "pleasant and innocuous" but "a little simple." She tells Keith that he's writing below his abilities and that she senses the potential for greatness in him, and encourages him to write classical music. Keith composes Partridge's First Concerto for Cello in D Major. When the concerto is finally performed, everyone hates it except for Rachel, who encourages Keith by reading him negative reviews of famous works of classical music and tells him that the more mature a piece is, the longer it will take the masses to appreciate it. Keith and Rachel have a long talk, during which Keith concludes that the problems with the performance were the audience and the orchestra. He decides that he needs to record it with professional musicians and release it on record so it can reach the right audience. After Walter Yost tells Keith that there's nothing wrong with pop music that makes people happy, Keith decides to give up on classical music and go back to writing pop, even though Rachel disagrees with Mr. Yost and thinks Keith is "settling." Rachel and Mr. Yost both attend the Partridge Family's next concert, where Rachel complains that she doesn't understand how Keith can be happy playing such simplistic music. At the end of the episode, she watches Ricky Stevens sing When I Grow Up.