The Cadillac Ranch Restaurant
The Cadillac Ranch Restaurant was Bonnie's idea. In 1992 she said her dream was to open a country bar — and Graham went to see Bill Petit, who owned an empty 5,000 square-foot building in downtown Plainville that had sat unused for years.
They signed the lease that year and put in the dance floor, the bar and the kitchen. Bonnie named it.
Their goal, in his telling, was not to turn a profit. It was to pay the rent.
They moved their dance instructor, Paula Frohn, over from Starstruck in Southington. Judy Clark was their rep for Country 92.5. John Saville brought the Rockin' Country Dance Party in on several Fridays, and it was a big success. And Graham added an attraction of his own devising: bar stool racing.
The offer he couldn't refuse
In 1996 the phone rang. It was the owners of the building at 45 Jude Lane, Southington. He had been very successful with Starstruck and with the Ranch, they said, and would he be interested in an offer he couldn't refuse.
Agree to pay the balance on the loan in monthly payments, and I will give you the property.
He agreed.
1997
In February 1997, Judy and Earl Clark came in as partners. Chrismo was hired out of Ohio the same month, having been voted Best Country DJ in the USA, and he was the Ranch's first DJ.
In April 1997 the Cadillac Ranch Restaurant opened at 45 Jude Lane, right off Interstate 84, with 15,000 square feet, three times the original. The building had previously been the Hall of Fame, Fantasia, Outback and Locomotion. They added the dance floor and the lower bar.
The Hall of Fame. Graham's first date with Bonnie was at a room called the Hall of Fame — and he has now confirmed it is this building. Art Secondo opened it in 1978 as the first sports bar in Connecticut, before it became Fantasia, then Locomotion, then Outback.
So they bought the room they had their first date in, and they have been running it for thirty years.
What happened there
Nearly 200 famous recording artists have played the room. Brad Paisley. Randy Owen of Alabama. Miranda Lambert. Rascal Flatts. The Five Satins. Marshall Tucker. Wynonna.
He still tells one story in particular. David Kersh — a true country singer, as Graham puts it — surprised the room mid-set by dropping a riff from Metallica into it, and the crowd stood up on their chairs. Not in protest. In delight.
It was not only country acts who turned up. Mike Ditka, Jim Kelly and Michael Irvin were regulars.
The Ranch has given more than $200,000 to St. Jude, and runs fundraisers for many other organisations.
And there is a tradition Graham started that has never lapsed: the Star Spangled Banner, every Friday and Saturday at nine o'clock.
In February 2007 they installed a mechanical bull called Old Thunder. It replaced the previous bull, which had come from Gilley's, the Texas honky-tonk that put mechanical bulls into American culture in the first place.
A fire in the electrical room in December 2003 closed the room until 25 February 2004. They replaced the dance floor, all the electrical and the plumbing, moved the bar and extended the top bar by about twenty feet. Dance lessons ran at the Bristol French Club while the work went on.
Fifteen months dark
The Ranch closed on 15 March 2020 and stayed shut for roughly fifteen months, line dancing being, as he put it, socially distanced by definition. They spent the shutdown putting in a new roof, new floors, new tables and chairs and new coolers, and reopened in July 2021. When it reopened, they began billing the Ranch as an event center as well as a country dance hall — weddings, company parties, celebrations of life, cornhole tournaments and charity nights alongside the dancing.
Recognised
In 2026 the Southington Regional Chamber of Commerce gave Graham its Gail DePaolo Community Service Award, and Bonnie was recognised with a Wishes on Wheels appreciation award. Thirty years of raising money for other people, noticed at last by the town.
The room is signed, on its own website, by the whole ownership group. Graham, Bonnie, Earl, Judy and Pete, under a single line:
There are no strangers, just friends you haven't met.
The gap, mostly closed. His 2026 document brought the room's own pictures at last — the building by day and in red neon, a full dance floor, the bar. Still missing: an opening night, a headline act on the stage, and bar stool racing in action. If those pictures exist, they belong here too.
