WEATHERFORD, Texas — It’s hard to fathom how many clients Marlene McConathy has seen in her 70 years as a hairdresser.
McConathy, who now works at New Image Salon in Weatherford, Texas, first started working there on Aug. 15, 1974, after graduating from beauty school in Fort Worth.
“I was scared to death,” McConathy said in an interview Wednesday, the day before clients, colleagues, family and friends celebrated her career milestone. “The first woman I met was someone I’d known my whole life.
“They had this machine called a roller. They would roll up the roller and put little tubes in it to dry it. By the time they got to that point, the roller would roll away and fall to the floor.”
The first three months were make or break for her.
“I kept asking every Saturday. Will you still need me on Monday?” she said.
In the end, McConathy found a career that was clearly suited to her and was doing very well.
“Ever since I could talk, I wanted to be a nurse or a hairdresser,” she says. “My sister became a nurse and wrote home and taught us all things, so I decided I didn’t want to be a nurse, so I went into hairdressing.”
Except for a two-year period when she moved to Irving for her husband’s work, McConathy worked in various beauty salons around Weatherford before settling on New Image three years ago.
She tried nails but didn’t love it, she tried management but “hated it,” she says, but she always came back to hair.
And along the way, the Pooleville native made lifelong friends with longtime regulars, including Nell Binion, who served her for more than 60 years before passing away last year.
“We would meet at the salon at 5:30, I’d do her hair, and then she’d go home and drive to General Dynamics,” McConathy recalled. “After she moved into a nursing home in Fort Worth, her daughter would come and bring her in to get a perm.”
After Binion died, McConathy styled her hair before the funeral, something she has done for others on several occasions.
“A lot of people don’t care about that, but I feel like it’s the last thing I can do for them,” she said.
Mary Jo Jordan has been a customer and friend of McConathy’s for as long as she can remember.
“She used to do my mom’s hair,” Jordan said. “She’s just one of the nicest people out there, such a sweet person. Such a good person, such a good hairdresser.”
Jordan still comes to see her every other week.
Fellow stylist Cindy Gomillion of New Image has worked next to McConathy since the brand moved to Weatherford in the early 1970s.
“She’s a foster parent, a mother figure, everything. She’s amazing,” Gomillion said. “I can rely on her for anything and I can learn so much just by watching her.”
“I learned so much from her, not just about hair but about life.”
When McConathy was in beauty school, students learned haircutting lessons by watching a teacher on stage, but the industry has changed a lot since then.
“And they mix shades, so we had to learn all that later,” she said.
Back then, foils used for highlighting and coloring were not used, hair was not ruffled or brushed, and razor cutting was not permitted.
“It was curled on top, pin curls on the sides and finger waves in the back,” McConathy said of the traditional hairstyle, “and the haircut was called a four-way cut.”
At one point during a particularly busy period at the South Main Street salon, stylists were handling 18 appointments a day.
“I left at 5:30 and got back around 5,” she said.
Now I’m down to three days a week, but I’ll go in on Thursdays if necessary.
A flexible schedule and the ability to plan her work day around her family’s activities allowed McConathy to continue working while her four sons were in school.
“All my kids played sports, and my husband worked the night shift at General Dynamics for six years,” she says. “I took them to baseball games, went out on Saturdays and kept score during the week.
“All the parents pitched in and helped out.”
Now, that same flexibility allows her to cherish the time she spends with her eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.
McConathy, who turns 90 in May next year (though you’d never guess it from his looks), has no plans to retire.
“I’ll keep going as long as I can get out of bed,” she said.