Old Dominion Barn Dance broadcast wedding in 1949

Old Dominion Barn Dance broadcast wedding in 1949

In 1952, country music legend Hank Williams married Billie Jones on the stage of the Louisiana Hayride show.

Three years before that, Richmond had its own country-style stage wedding. On Saturday, March 19, 1949, musician Ruey "Curley" Collins married 18-year-old Chesterfield County resident Kathleen "Kaki" Williams onstage at the Mosque, now Richmond's Landmark Theater, during a live broadcast of the Old Dominion Barn Dance.

The wedding was held at the cavernous Mosque instead of the show's downtown home at the WRVA Theater to accommodate a large crowd. The marriage was witnessed by an estimated 5,000 ticket holders and heard by thousands more who tuned in to the show on Richmond radio station WRVA.

From its inception in 1946 to its closing in 1957, Old Dominion Barn Dance was a local and national phenomenon. It showcased some of the biggest names in country music, including a young, hip-swiveling Elvis Presley, and June Carter, who later married Johnny Cash.

Key to the show's success was the down-home showmanship of its emcee, Mary "Sunshine Sue" Workman. She and husband John Workman assembled a talented cast and attracted stellar guests.

One of the cast was fiddler Curley Collins, who joined the show the year it opened.

At 31, the Kentucky native was no newcomer to country music. Collins won the National Fiddling Championship in 1938, played in a succession of country bands, and served in the Army before he settled in Richmond.

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At the Old Dominion Barn Dance, Collins paired with Pennsylvania native Benny Kissinger to form the musical duo "Benny and Curley."

Their act was more than fiddling, singing and comic banter. "Kissinger could yodel like a transplanted Swiss mountaineer," wrote a reviewer in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. "Curley, with guitar hung on his back, made his fiddle virtually sing a duet with Benny's yodeling."

Collins met his future wife in 1948, after she mailed Kissinger a sketch she had drawn of one of his comic characters.

Kissinger invited her to the studio. Within a year, Collins had asked her to marry him, and she agreed. When WRVA learned of the impending nuptials, the station asked the couple to marry onstage during a live broadcast of the Old Dominion Barn Dance.

"They paid for everything," said Kaki Collins, who now lives in Henrico County. (Curley Collins died in Richmond in 1986.) Unlike her husband, Collins was not a professional musician. "It was strictly a one-time performance," she said of the wedding.

An ad in the Sunday, March 13, Times-Dispatch announced that tickets for the event were going on sale the next day at 10 a.m. "A Real Stage Wedding!" the ad promised.

"The day tickets went on sale, they were sold out by noon," Collins recalled.

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The night of the wedding, the Mosque seemed overwhelming. "It was the longest aisle I ever walked down in my life," she said.

Gov. William M. Tuck, a loyal Old Dominion Barn Dance fan, attended the ceremony, Collins said. A reception at the Hotel Richmond near Capitol Square followed the show, and Collins remembers she wore a hat created by legendary Richmond milliner Sara Sue.

The radio station offered to pay for a honeymoon in Rio de Janeiro, but the bride refused. "I wanted to meet his people in Kentucky," she explained.

After the trip, they returned home for a final joint appearance on the show, this time at WRVA Theater. "The Honeymoon Couple On Stage," said the ads. "You are invited!"

Collins said she was given three orchids onstage as a welcome-home gift. Each flower had a $100 bill wrapped around its stem, and any hint of stage fright vanished.

"I like the foliage!" she ad-libbed to the audience.