Bash script loop to grow parameters

I want to use whiptail to generate a checkbox list based on the output from another program. Only the first word on each line of the output from the first program is necessary, so I extract it using awk.

To learn about how bash handles arrays, I have been using this link by tldp. I got how to check the size of arrays from here.

This doesn't run as expected, but if I copy the echo output, and type "whiptail" in front of it, it does work.

How do I fix this code so that it works?

example program.sh:

#! /bin/bash
find ./  -printf "%f\n"

example mainscript.sh:

#! /bin/bash
MYARRAY=($(./program.sh -l | awk '{print $1;}'))
MYPARAMS=" --checklist \"\" 15 40 5"
i=0
while [[ $i -lt ${#MYARRAY[@]} ]]
do
        MYPARAMS+=" \"${MYARRAY[$i]}\" \" \" off"
        i=$[$i+1]
done
whiptail $MYPARAMS
echo $MYPARAMS
exit