8 JANUARY 2023 | PROMOTING EVENTS THAT MAKE A DIFFERENCE | INTHEVUE.COM But the story of Kingsway Skateland doesn’t really start when the business first opened its doors back in 1973. Because the story of Kingsway doesn’t really belong to Kingsway. Nope, it belongs to owner Connie Markgraf. And the story of how the wheels of roller skating keep turning in Connie’s life begins much earlier than that. The wheels of that story started turning in the 1950’s when Connie’s uncle, who was living in Kansas, got the opportunity to buy a small skating supply company. When she was little, Connie remembers going into her uncle’s basement where he’d set up the shop to help him lace up some skates to sell. Not long after, her uncle bought his first skating rink, the Overland Park Roller Rink, and it’s there that Connie laced up her first set of skates. “I was eight years old and I’d never skated,” she recalls. “That’s where I learned to skate.” Not long after, Connie’s uncle talked her parents into building their own skating rink in the town they lived in. She was just a couple of years older when the Grandview Roller Rink opened in Grandview, Missouri. The Grandview Roller Rink was where Connie became a self- proclaimed rink rat. She’d go to work with her parents. “I was young so they couldn’t leave me at home,” she recalls. “I was there every weekend.” And being there every weekend gave Connie the opportunity to spend a lot of time on wheels. She got so good, in fact, that she was able to join a competitive skating club for a few years. She’s modest about her competitive skating days, but imagining those sounds amazing, right? But behind Connie’s skating, competing, and having fun with friends, her parents were struggling to find the time to manage both the rink and her father’s job as a railway mail carrier. “It really got too much for him to do both,” she recalls. “They finally sold it a few years later.” When the doors to the Grandview Roller Rink closed, Connie says she thought the life of roller staking had closed up with them. How could she know, as a teenager, that the wheels of this story were far from stopping? “I never dreamed in my life that I would ever be involved in skating again,” she says. “I never dreamed I would own my own rink.” Connie grew up, trained to become an x-ray tech and reconnected with a neighbor boy named Tony. They got married and when Tony needed a job that would give him flexible hours so he could finish college, you’ll never guess where he turned. Yep, he went right back into the family business, getting a job from Connie’s uncle, who by then was running a blossoming skate supply company, supplying everything from skates, to flooring, to rinks around the nation. One day Tony traveled from Kansas City to Cape Girardeau to deliver some skates and install flooring for a rink there. He made friends with the owners while he worked. They chatted— told him about their plans to expand, maybe even open a rink in nearby Paducah. As he was leaving that day, the owners had an idea. Maybe this young guy, who’d been so helpful to their rink, would be willing to take over that expanded rink in Paducah. Maybe they’d found someone they could trust to run it for them from two hours away. But Tony drove a hard bargain. He wouldn’t move his young family to Paducah just to be the manager. He wanted to be part- owner. They shook hands. And then Tony and Connie started packing. Back into a life as a rink rat Connie was heading. In January 1973, the doors to Kingsway Skateland opened up in Paducah. And Connie was there. Sandra Hall and Connie Markgraf
