In 1925, world leaders were signing the final treaties coming out of WWI; Congress authorized work on Mt. Rushmore as a national memorial; the Scopes Trial was held in Tennessee; and the first patent on radio transmission was only 28 years old.
And, in 1925, WSM first broadcast its barn dance – soon to become the Grand Ole Opry.
One hundred years later, the Grand Ole Opry is the world’s longest-running radio program. After a century that saw changes unparalleled in world history, audiences are still drawn to the Opry. Every week thousands make the pilgrimage to the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville while others tune in around the world. The show continues to inspire new generations of performers to aspire to step “into the circle” on the Opry House stage.
In The Beginning Was Insurance
In the 1920s, Edwin Craig was watching radio stations emerge across the nation – and seeing the money-making potential for sponsors and owners. He convinced Cornelius Craig, his father and founder of the National Life and Accident Insurance Company, that a radio station could sell a lot of insurance.
Soon, the fifth floor of the company’s downtown Nashville building held a radio studio. The call letters WSM stood for “We Shield Millions,” the company’s motto. A program that would become the lifeblood of country music started as a way to promote life insurance.
The hiring of George D. Hay away from Chicago’s WLS was the beginning of the WSM Barn Dance. The 30-year-old who called himself The Solemn Old Judge and started every show with a steamboat whistle would set the tone for much of the Opry’s 100 years – including its name.
Which all started with a clash of cultures.
Some upper-crust Nashville residents complained the only radio they could hear on weekends was string band programming from the dominant WSM station. In response, WSM began carrying the syndicated “Music Appreciation Hour.”
The Barn Dance slot followed the classical program, and Hay, not one to pass up a good line, said, “For the past hour, we have been listening to music largely from Grand Opera, but from now on, we will present ‘the Grand Ole Opry.”
For years, the Shield Men – door-to-door National Life and Accident insurance salesmen carrying the company’s shield logo – introduced themselves as representing the Grand Ole Opry. They would even listen outside windows to see who was tuned in to the Opry – and who would be a likely customer.
The earliest WSM shows relied on local talent, running heavily toward fiddlers and string bands. But Hay would invite whoever he thought the audience would like.
DeFord Bailey, a Black musician grounded in both the blues and old-time string band music, became a regular, wowing audiences with his harmonica. Kitty Cora Cline, the first female soloist, performed on hammered dulcimer, and Fred Shriver played the accordion. Uncle Dave Macon on his banjo with Sid Harkreader on fiddle and guitar set the stage for the comedy that would remain central to the Opry’s success, with songs like, “Keep My Skillet Good and Greasy.”
A Beacon
As the recording industry grew, the variety of musicians available to the Opry grew, as well. The show began featuring brother duets, cowboy music, Western swing and solo crooners. Bill Monroe & the Blue Grass Boys were featured stars for decades.
Opry singers expressed the joys of new romance, the happiness of Sunday dinner on the lawn, the sorrow of lost love, and the loneliness of leaving home. Audiences across America listened – and related. The Opry became a focus of family life.
Dolly Parton, like many rural listeners, grew up without electricity. Her family faithfully listened to the Opry on a battery-powered radio. Waylon Jennings’ dad would hook their radio to the car battery. Jeannie Seely’s family would pile in the car and drive up a hill until they could get the signal. Opry history is filled with stories of musicians who listened as children – and dreamed of growing up to perform, like their idols, on the iconic stage.
Opry member Dierks Bentley, who gracefully moves between country and bluegrass, told BGS, “Being invited to join at all is the biggest honor – especially for me, personally. I grew up listening to all the Opry greats on the radio with my dad, so becoming a member is like having the ultimate backstage pass to see the best musicians in the world. And to be invited by Marty Stuart … hands down, it was one of the coolest nights of my life.”
Dan Rogers, the Opry’s senior vice president and executive producer, said the Opry has always been a place to celebrate the good times and be uplifted during the tough times. “Think about,” he said, “the folks who tuned in on Saturday nights during World War II. That was their only source of entertainment throughout the week.” Minnie Pearl, with her signature “How-dee,” and Roy Acuff gave them respite from war news.
On the first show after the 9-11 attacks in 2001, Rogers said, “Our background singers sang an a cappella version of ‘God Bless America.’ And one by one, the people in the audience stood and sang along. And I remember thinking, I bet everybody tuned in across the country is singing along to ‘God Bless America.’”
The Opry’s response to the COVID-19 crisis created desperately needed connection during a frightening time of isolation.
Just a week after deciding that live audience shows weren’t safe, Opry staff arranged a pared-down streaming production with no audience and a skeleton crew. Longtime cast members Bill Anderson, Jeannie Seely and Connie Smith held down the first night alongside Mandy Barnett, Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper, and Sam Williams.
For the second weekend of restrictions, veterans Vince Gill, Marty Stuart, and Brad Paisley sat on stools spread out across the stage and pulled off what Rogers called “a beautiful, beautiful show.”
Watching from his office, Rogers started reading comments from grateful listeners. For months, people marked their calendars to tune in. They wrote, “I’m in Europe. I set my alarm. It’s 2 a.m. here, but I wanted to experience this with a community.”
Kathy Mattea, the newest Opry inductee, feels those connections whenever she performs there.
People may have sung along to her hit “18 Wheels and a Dozen Roses” in their car or in the shower, but at the Opry, she says to BGS, “Here’s your chance to sit with an audience and sing this song that everybody knows. Nobody knows who the person next to them voted for and it doesn’t matter at that moment.”
“The Ellis Island of Country Music”
In the early days of radio, what was called hillbilly music was as limitless as the range of a 50,000 watt radio station. And the Opry remains dedicated to maintaining those wide open spaces.
Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, in their forward to the book 100 Years of the Grand Ole Opry, refer to the show as the “Ellis Island of Country Music – a place where all are welcome.”
Contemporary country often has been accused of being homogenous and limited. But despite the factors that have controlled commercial country, the Opry maintains its open-arms attitude. Rogers said, “The two core tenets of an Opry show are celebrating the past, present, and future of country music, and also showcasing multiple genres under the country music umbrella.”
In any show, he said, “You might have something that’s on the top 20 of the country charts today. And you’ll have country classics. You might have a contemporary Christian song, Americana string music, or even something from outside the genre by somebody who just happens to be a country music fan or was influenced by country music.”
In 1974, the R&B-oriented Pointer Sisters included an original country song, “Fairytale,” on their second album. The cross-over hit earned them an invitation to the Opry stage, where they became the first Black group to perform.
Ringo Starr appeared for the first time in 2025 and James Taylor’s debut on November 11 will be remembered as a big part of the 100th anniversary celebration.
And, Rogers said, “Because we can do it, it’s fun to take a chance on a new artist.”
Before his first Opry appearance in July 2022, Zach Top had no hits to his name. But Rogers remembered the programming team saying, “You don’t see an artist like that every day. It sure feels to us like our audience would absolutely eat that guy up!” Today, Top’s music is everywhere.
Bluegrass has been a staple since before it had a name and it has never lost its place on the stage. Bentley and Del McCoury played “Roll on Buddy, Roll On” when the Grand Ole Opry House first reopened after the 2010 flood closed its doors for months.
Charlie Mattos is a 10-year veteran Opry announcer and longtime co-host and producer of WSM’s morning show. He said that on any given night, a portion of the Opry House audience “may truly have never seen a bluegrass band play.”
“And when Del McCoury and the boys finish with an incredible instrumental,” Mattos continued, “or Sister Sadie blisters the stage … the enthusiasm that comes out of that crowd, the immediate standing ovation for the insane musicianship that they have just witnessed …” Mattos said, “it blows their minds.”
Mattea said, “Bluegrass is front porch jazz – the virtuoso playing and the vocals and the harmonies and the trading off of licks. That’s how I fell in love with bluegrass.” And the Opry exposes millions to that brilliance.
A Good-Natured Riot
The Opry show is a complex set of acts and sets requiring precision planning, flexibility, and good nature on the part of the announcers – and commitment on the part of the performers. Rehearsals are brief or non-existent. Timing is everything.
Borrowing a phrase from George D. Hay, the Opry is still sometimes called a “good-natured riot.”
Mattos said, “When you come to see the show live, you see it all. The set changes. The artists leaving as the announcer sends them off. You can see the stage crew out there and usually in 90 seconds they can completely swap things around.”
But while reading a commercial during set changes, Mattos may notice the stage manager giving the “stretch” signal. He might have to keep talking for as long as four minutes – a millennium in radio time.
Sometimes the commercials themselves become the entertainment.
The first time Glad Wags sponsored an Opry segment, Chuck Morgan was announcing. While he stood off-stage reading the dog food commercial, house bassist Bill Linneman came up behind him and started barking. “By my last year there, there were like 20 people behind me going at it,” Morgan said. (The consensus is that Connie Smith does a great chihuahua imitation.)
A Family
Jeannie Seely – who racked up nearly 5,400 performances on the Grand Ole Opry before her passing in August 2025 – remembered it was more than the music that fueled her desire to join the Opry: “That’s hearing these people, like Mr. Acuff and Minnie [Pearl] and Jimmy Dickens and all of them, coming together every week,” she says in 100 Years of the Grand Ole Opry. “They always sounded like they were so glad to be together. They picked on each other and joked, and I thought, that’s just like a family.”
And they were family. When the plane Jim Reeves was aboard crashed in a wooded Nashville suburb, Marty Robbins and Ernest Tubb joined the search party, as did the elegant Nashville socialite Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon – known as Minnie Pearl.
Opry star Jean Shepard was expecting her second child with husband Harold “Hawkshaw” Hawkins when Hawkins died in the plane crash that also killed Patsy Cline and Cowboy Copas. After months feeling adrift, as Shepard was quoted in the 100 Years book, “I looked down my driveway one day and here come two big black limousines full of the so-called ‘higher-ups’ from the Grand Ole Opry. They said, ‘We want you to come back to the Grand Ole Opry.’ And it really meant a lot to me.”
The family feeling is no accident. In earlier years, Opry members had to perform a specified number of Saturday nights a year. While there’s no set number today, Rogers said they look for a sense of commitment in new members. “It truly is about that relationship,” he said.
Rogers quoted Mattea, upon her invitation to become a member, saying, “These people treat you like family, no matter what.”
One of Mattea’s favorite Opry memories involves a bass player who toured with her. “He was sitting on a stool, playing and singing some old Western swing chestnut, and suddenly Riders in the Sky leaned into the dressing room in full regalia and started singing harmony.
“He was gobsmacked. He felt it was the highlight of his life,” she said.
Bluegrass performer Kody Norris’ music is influenced heavily by first- and second-generation bluegrass. But the band’s preference for flashy suits dates back to a family-friendly welcome Norris received 25 years ago.
His parents took nine-year-old Kody backstage at the Opry, “and I met Bill Anderson. And he had on a red rhinestone suit. That’s the first one I ever saw up close, where I could touch it.”
Later that day, upon meeting his equally rhinestone-clad hero, Porter Wagoner, young Kody got so excited he spit out his chewing gum. Wagoner graciously grabbed two Opry-logoed napkins, one of which the little boy used for his gum. The other one the grown Norris still keeps in perfect condition.
The Circle is Unbroken
In 1974, the Opry left its revered home of decades, the Ryman Auditorium, to move to the deliciously air-conditioned 4,400-seat Grand Ole Opry House.
To honor its longtime home, the Opry crew cut a circle out of the Ryman stage and inset it in the new Opry House stage. The circle symbolizes the Opry’s continuity, respect for the past, and optimism for the future.
Mattea experienced that sense of a completed circle on the day she became an Opry member.
“Suzy [Bogguss] was there. We’ve toured together and sung on each other’s records. She’s my closest artist friend, and she was the only one at the ceremony who was not a member. And I thought how generous it was of her to be there.
“So, while I was overflowing with celebration, to get to invite my friend to the party publicly in the name of the Opry was the sweetest gift. It was a moment I’ll never forget, and I’m going to be there for her induction, too.” Bogguss will officially be inducted as an Opry member in early 2026.
Join The Celebration
There’s nothing low-key about the Grand Ole Opry – so in the classic Opry spirit, fans have had plenty of opportunity to celebrate the centennial all year long.
Earlier this year, NBC broadcast a three-hour anniversary special, with dozens of stars ranging from Reba McEntire to Jelly Roll to The War and Treaty. The Opry also took the show to London’s Royal Albert Hall for the very first time. You can stream clips of these and other Opry events on YouTube and social media.
With the Virgin Music Group, the Opry has produced the album Opry 100, Country’s Greatest Songs (released November 7). Among the unforgettable recordings are Vince Gill singing his heart-rending “Go Rest High on That Mountain,” Dolly Parton singing “I Will Always Love You,” and Ashley McBryde covering the classic “Your Cheatin’ Heart.” You can order the album from the Opry site.
Craig Shelburne, Brenda Colladay, and Opry members and employees collaborated on 100 Years of the Grand Ole Opry, a book filled with anecdotes and photos that vividly illustrate the Opry’s remarkable history. And to teach your children well, there’s also a new childrens’ picture book written by Emily Frans and illustrated by Susanna Chapman. Find them in your local bookstore.
And, on November 28, 2025, the official 100th anniversary of the Grand Ole Opry we all hold dear, the Opry is celebrating with two huge birthday party shows featuring country stars and Opry members like Vince Gill, Ricky Skaggs, Trace Adkins, Dailey & Vincent, Bill Anderson, Jamey Johnson, Marty Stuart, and many, many more. Tickets are available here.
Of course, the celebrations will continue in 2026.
“The Opry is the core and soul of country music,” Bentley said. “It’s a place where the past, present and future of our genre all come together. There isn’t anywhere else like it.”
Continue exploring our Artist of the Month coverage of Opry 100 here.
All photos courtesy of Ryman Hospitality Properties, credits and attributions as marked. Lead image: Bill Monroe & the Blue Grass Boys and the Opry Square Dancers take the Opry stage at the Ryman Auditorium in the 1960s.
