The paper reports on experimental developments for studies of decays of proton radioactive nuclei on the Argonne Fragment Mass Analyzer. The results illustrate that there is a clear proton decay rate sensitivity to the unpaired neutron orbital in highly deformed odd‐odd nuclei consistent with the Influential Spectator Model of Ferreira and Maglione. No such sensitivity is observed for the proton decay rates of spherical odd‐odd nuclei studied here. The first ever study of proton decay from a nucleus,135Tb, produced via 1p6n fusion evaporation is also reported. © 2003 American Institute of Physics