Wilma Lee Cooper suffered a stroke on stage at the Ryman Auditorium in February 2001, was told she would never walk again, and then walked back onto the Grand Ole Opry stage to thank her audience. This episode traces the life of the singer the Smithsonian Institution named the First Lady of Bluegrass in 1974, from her 1921 birth in Valley Head, West Virginia, to a coal miner and a schoolteacher, through the Leary Family gospel group, the 1938 National Folk Festival, and recordings for the Library of Congress.

We follow her marriage to fiddler Stoney Cooper in 1941, the formation of the Clinch Mountain Clan, their Roy Acuff-influenced early sound, and the dobro-driven arrangements engineered to cut through AM radio static. From ten years on the 50,000-watt WWVA Jamboree in Wheeling and syndicated transcription discs to joining the Opry in 19 ...