Playing five-string banjo, she performed with two Carver cousins in a band broadcast on WHB in Kansas City, Missouri.
[3] After developing a following in her native Barren County, Kentucky, she eventually attracted the attention of radio station WHAS in Louisville, where she became a featured act with Frankie Moore's Log Cabin Boys in 1935.
[3]: 88 As her radio shows gained popularity, she moved on to larger markets at WNOX in Knoxville, Tennessee, at KMOX in St. Louis[5]: 49 (beginning in 1941)[3]: 88 and Chicago.
[citation needed] Her KMOX broadcast attracted more than 2.5 million listeners "from Canada to Mexico.
[1][2] After the Osborne Brothers heard Cousin Emmy and Her Kinfolk's recording of "Ruby Are You Mad?"
In 1961, while performing at a "Country & Western Night" show at Disneyland, she met the New Lost City Ramblers, one of several groups that had formed during that time.
[4] Her song "Chilly Scenes of Winter" from the album The New Lost City Ramblers with Cousin Emmy is mentioned in Ann Beattie's 1976 novel of the same name, when the novel's protagonist Charles listens to it.