By Mike Houlihan

March 13^th,2026

Old friends are dropping dead in every direction but still we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. As we should! It’s an occasion to celebrate all the good things life has given us, including those friends.

My friend, Catherine O’Connell, the Celtic Nightingale, our “Diva Cat” will celebrate a milestone. She was Queen of Chicago’s St. Patrick’s Day parade, fifty years ago this season. She was just a teenager then, when Mayor Richard J. Daley welcomed her to City Hall with her parents.

We’re planning a celebration of Catherine’s reign out at Gaelic Park on Friday, March 20^th at 7PM with a screening of my indie comic documentary HER MAJESTY, ‘DA QUEEN, and we’re inviting all former queens, contestants, and even disgruntled divas to look back at Chicago’s favorite pageant. Please join us for this very special “hooley” with the girls.

Coming out of St. Margaret of Scotland parish on the south side, Catherine was the queen of Chicago’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade in 1976. The oldest of six kids, she started singin’ in Irish pubs soon after and is now the songstress of record for all Chicago Irish.

She even sang at my mother’s funeral. I’ll never forget walking down the aisle of Christ the King parish, with my mom’s coffin and my five-brother pall bearers, and looking up to the balcony to hear Catherine singing “Did you ever know that you’re my hero?”  Remembering that moment still brings a tear to my eye.

The pinnacle might have been when Catherine was invited to sing “The Isle of Innisfree” at Maureen O’Hara’s funeral, graveside at Arlington National Cemetery. Catherine shares many of the same traits of the late actress, “Ireland’s Leading Lady”, including her spirit and striking beauty.

Her dad got her started singin’ while still a toddler. He stood her up on the kitchen table to sing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and she would harmonize in high school with her sisters Susie, Eileen, and Maureen doing the Mamas and Papas.

Over the years she’s played with bands, released albums, becoming a fixture on the wedding and funeral circuit at Old St. Patrick’s parish. “One year I played 144 weddings!” She tells me, “We marry ‘em and bury ‘em!”

So back in 1975, Catherine’s mom Mary, and her friend Kay Brett, (mother of 1967 Queen Jackie Brett), secretly submitted Catherine’s photo to the Plumbers for the Queen contest “without even telling me”

“Yeah, but I made the court and I got a watch. And sometime in the next year, the watch disappeared, I think one of my brother’s friends swiped it…”

The next year Catherine sent in her own picture, hoping to win a replacement watch. “And when I made the court again and I went out there for that final interview and I just said, ‘Don’t worry about me. I got what I came for, I got my watch,’ and that struck a chord, and they really laughed, and that might have been it.”

She’s been striking chords ever since, including winning the Rose of Tralee the very next year.

But her best memory is the trip to Ireland the Plumbers give the Queen. Catherine went alone with her mom Mary and her dad, Chicago Fire Dept. Capt. James “Mush” O’Connell. “That ride to Ireland was my first plane trip and it just changed my life. Imagine when you come from a big family, being able to go with just your mom and dad!”

They left for Ireland in August, and after her folks returned home, Catherine stayed on an extra six weeks in Connemara where her grandfather is buried. Her Dad passed away the next April so that trip is an indelible memory for this gracious Queen.

Since then, Queen Catherine has lived a life of majesty here in Chicago, giving birth to three fine young men, sons: Neil, Brendan and Gavin and grandsons: Tommy and Michael; and the windy city has embraced her as our Grand Dame of St. Patrick’s Day as she continues her reign.

“I have loved this sorority of girls and women, you know I didn’t even graduate college and now we’ve got girls that are lawyers, and doctors and astrophysicists, so the whole tenor of this thing is raised, and yet these girls have great fun together now, especially because they make so much more of being in the court, so the girls become really good friends and…they take care of each other and so that part of it is very, it’s really lovely to see.”

It’s a Sisterhood!

“And that really started…well it was really pushed by the Coynes.”

That would be Plumbers Union Local 130 Business Manager Jim Coyne and his wife Michelle.

Queen Catherine is great company. She tells plenty of stories, about memorable bar fights and donnybrooks in pubs she has played, or uniquely funny moments in Chicago Irish history, and then can just as easily break your heart as she hits a high note on “You Are the Wind Beneath My Wings.”

You might see her singing at mass at Old St. Pat’s, or in the parade this year or why not join us on March 20^th at Gaelic Park for our film screening of HER MAJESTY, ‘DA QUEEN, my comic documentary on the Plumbers Union Annual Pageant.

Please join us, you will be in the presence of royalty.

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Known around town as “Houli,” he is former features columnist for The Chicago Sun-Times, Irish American News and currently Chicago correspondent for The Irish Echo. He began his career in 1973 as an apprentice with The American Shakespeare Festival, appearing in the classics there and in regional productions across the nation as well as Off-Broadway, on Broadway, on TV and in major motion pictures. He is a playwright and author of anthologies “Hooliganism Stories” and “More Hooliganism Stories” and the gonzo Mayoral campaign journal “Nothin’s on The Square”. Founder of the Annual Irish American Movie Hooley film festival each Fall at The Wilmette Theatre. He was honored as 2020/2021 “Irishman of the Year” by the Emerald Society, the Irish American Police Association. His Hibernian Radio Hour podcast can be found at hibernianradio.org and streaming worldwide on Sat. nights from 7-8PM on Global Irish Radio, GIR.ie.

His latest book ” Chicago Irish Mythology” is available on Amazon and wherever else you buy your books.

Even more info about Houli is available here, on his latest adventures: hibernianmedia.org