Kay Cox King has worked at Mountain Laurel Chalets for 35 years — since she was 10 years old, tagging along at the office where her kindergarten teacher, Dot Ogle, would later become her boss. Today, Kay serves as MLC's property manager, but her connection to Gatlinburg goes back far deeper than her career: she and her husband Clark can both trace their roots back 13 generations, to one of the very first women to settle in the area, Martha Jane Huskey Ogle.
Kay's family history reads like a founding chapter of Gatlinburg's hospitality industry itself. Her great-grandfather, Andy Huff, opened the Mountain View Hotel — Gatlinburg's first. His wife, Martha, is the reason Gatlinburg has a school at all: family legend holds that after townspeople grew suspicious of the newly arrived Pi Beta Phi teachers and tried to run them off, Martha had a dream about ignorance sweeping down the creek toward her children, waking convinced they needed education. Andy raised the money that very day to buy the schoolhouse property. Meanwhile, Kay's other great-grandmother, Hattie Ogle, built an early vacation rental empire from scratch — working at her father's downtown grocery store, she noticed a shortage of guest lodging and began building and paying off cabins one at a time, insisting that her properties, not her own wardrobe, always look pristine.
The conversation traces Kay's own life growing up "pool hopping" between family-owned motels along Baskin's Creek, her decades of near-daily bear encounters, her family's history running McCutcheon's Candies on the parkway (where she met her husband Clark, a candy maker at the time), and her reflections on what's changed — and what hasn't — in Gatlinburg since her childhood in the 1970s and '80s.
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- Thirteen generations deep — and married to a cousin. Kay and her husband Clark, married 42 years, can both trace their lineage back to Martha Jane Huskey Ogle, one of the first women to settle in the Gatlinburg area — a common thread among many longtime mountain families.
- The dream that built Gatlinburg's first school. Kay's great-grandmother Martha reportedly dreamed of "ignorance" sweeping down the creek toward her children after townspeople tried to run off the newly arrived Pi Beta Phi teachers; her husband Andy Huff raised the money to buy the schoolhouse property the very next day.
- An early vacation rental empire, built cabin by cabin. Kay's other great-grandmother, Hattie Ogle, noticed a shortage of guest lodging while working at her father's downtown grocery store and began building cabins one at a time — paying off each property before starting the next, always prioritizing her buildings' upkeep over her own appearance.
- A childhood spent "pool hopping." Growing up at the family's 20-room Circle K Motel on Baskin's Creek, Kay made lifelong friends splashing in the pool with visiting kids and roaming a downtown where doors went unlocked and children ran free until dark.
- A candy-shop romance. Kay met her husband Clark while working at McCutcheon's Candies on the parkway, a business owned by Clark's family — she handed out free samples before the couple eventually took over the shop themselves for several years.
- "Magazine ready" is the standard. As property manager, Kay describes obsessing over details like straightened, plumped couch cushions — every home she walks through should look camera-ready by the time she leaves.
- Guests become family. Long-running relationships with repeat guests — some going back 25 years — blur the line between guest and community member, echoing Mountain Laurel Chalets' founding philosophy that "your family is our company."
- The mountains hem Gatlinburg in — on purpose. Kay believes the surrounding national park, which limits the town's ability to sprawl, is exactly what preserves its small-town character: "We're hugged by the mountains."
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