Barbara Neely, co-founder and longtime matriarch of the legendary Interstate Bar-B-Q in Memphis, passed away Monday, June 16. She was 86.
Neely wasn’t just the wife of barbecue icon Jim Neely. For nearly half a century, she was the restaurant’s beating heart and smiling face, working tirelessly alongside her husband to build one of Memphis’ most treasured culinary institutions.
Jim Neely was the taste; Barbara was the “face of Interstate,” Jim Neely told The Tri-State Defender after another full day at the restaurant, his second since her death Monday.
“When you walked into Interstate Bar-B-Q,, I don’t care who you were — politicians, celebrities, regular folks — first face you were gonna see was Barbara,” he said. “And that’s who you were gonna be talking to most of the time.”
The Neelys opened Interstate Bar-B-Q in 1979, converting a former South Memphis grocery store into a barbecue joint that would go on to receive national acclaim. Jim handled the pit and the product; Barbara ran the front, managed the phones and made sure every guest was welcomed like family.
And those who didn’t know how to behave?
“She had something for ‘em. People used to ask her, ‘Why aren’t you scared working down here?’” Jim said.
“She said, ‘No. I’ll pick up this billy club and knock his a$$ off.’ She didn’t play.”
Barbara was still working up until just weeks before her passing — spending 14 hours at the restaurant on Memorial Day, even while sick.
“She went up there on Memorial Day, and she was there for 14 hours,” Jim recalled. “When she got home, I said, ‘Barbara, why would you go up there and stay that long?’ But that was her life. She got up every morning at five o’clock and she would go up there. I said, ‘Stop going. Go at six.’ She wouldn’t hear it.”
The couple worked side-by-side for 45 years. When asked about the secret to building both a business and a marriage that endured, Jim said:
“You know what it was like? Knowing when to hold and when to fold. Knowing when to shut up and just let her have her say. Because if you don’t, you’re just gonna get tired.
“All we wanted to do was make it through the day so we were home at night. We didn’t go home and take no attitudes or Interstate to our bedroom. We shared (the title of) boss,” he continued.
“I respected what she was doing, and she respected what I was doing. I stayed in my lane. It’s just a respect for each other. You can’t be in there like cats and dogs all day. You’d be miserable. And you can’t make it, much less last 45 years.”
The Neelys nephew Patrick Neely said it was because of his uncle and aunt that he was able to open his own successful Memphis BBQ restaurant, Neely’s, and later have a television cooking show.
Barbara Neely, he said, was “the true backbone of the family. She preferred to stay behind the scenes, away from fame, but making sure the business was done. She was a remarkable, quiet woman,” he added.
“If it had not been for them, I never would have been on TV,” stated Patrick Neely, whose show with his former wife Gina, Cooking with the Neelys, ran seven days a week on the Food Network from 2008 to 2014. “They taught me all I know and encouraged me to pursue television.”
The respect Jim and Barbara Neely had for each other extended not only to family but to their staff — and especially to the young people who came through the restaurant over the years.
“I had a girl call me yesterday,” Jim Neely said. “When she worked there, she was young — teenager, dumb, belligerent. Barbara used to work with her. That girl went on and became a registered nurse. She called me just to thank me for the stuff we instilled in her when she was there.
“And we’ve done that for numerous people,” he said. “We mentored them, and they respected it.”
Together, Jim and Barbara also traveled the world — driving across Europe, exploring East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and even flying across the U.S. in a private plane Jim piloted himself.
In keeping with her wishes, a celebration of Barbara Neely’s life will be held Friday, June 27, at noon at Mt. Vernon Baptist Church, 620 Parkrose Ave. in Memphis. Visitation is scheduled for Thursday, June 26, at R.S. Lewis & Sons Funeral Home.
Don’t expect to see Jim Neely at the visitation however — for the same reason he says Barbara’s casket will be closed during the service.
“I don’t want to see my wife in no casket,” he said, reflecting on the lingering pain of losing his son, Kelvin Neely in March 2015 from complications related to sickle cell disease.
“My son died — I told them ‘close that casket before I come in there,’ I‘d go to funerals as a kid and you’d be sittin’ in the front, lookin’ at your loved ones cryin’ the whole time.
“Aw, naw…. Hell naw,” he said. “I want her funeral to be a celebration of the life that we lived.”
