Verna Elisha Howard (September 29, 1911 – September 28, 2000), known as V. E. Howard, was an American minister and radio evangelist based in Texarkana, Texas, who founded the International Gospel Hour.

Howard was the oldest of six children born in the Rocky Branch community near Farmerville in Union Parish in North Louisiana to Elisha John "Hardy" Howard (1889–1974) and the former Corinne Smith (1888–1971).

[1] On December 20, 1931, Howard married Ruth Moryne Jackson (1909–2000) in Corsicana in central Texas.

brought what is considered possibly the greatest response ever to a religious broadcast in radio history.

Howard, at the age of eighty-four in 1995, on the advice of his physicians, transferred the International Gospel Hour to the West Fayetteville Church of Christ in Fayetteville in Lincoln County in southern Tennessee, under the minister Winford Claiborne.

[2] Howard led revival meetings in twenty states and baptized some eight thousand converts.