While freelancing and doing public relations work in 1912, he started writing a daily column about New York City life for "the home folks."

His publicity work for the Hotel Majestic gave him free room and board, and syndication made him one of the highest-paid newspaper writers, with an income of more than $200,000 each year.

He lived in style, and his many celebrity friends included Irvin S. Cobb, Gene Fowler, Major Bowes and top talents of Broadway.

[2] In 1929, McIntyre described his approach in the preface to Twenty-five Selected Stories, a collection of his articles from Cosmopolitan: "I write from a country town angle of a city's glamour, and the metropolis has never lost its thrill for me.

He died on Valentine's Day, February 14, 1938, of a heart attack at 2 A.M. at his apartment, 290 Park Avenue in Manhattan, New York City.

"[5] Maybelle Hope Small McIntyre, who lived to the age of 101, died in a nursing home in Point Pleasant, West Virginia on April 28, 1985.

The annual O. O. McIntyre Postgraduate Writing Fellowship was established in 1986 by the Missouri School of Journalism to help aspiring writers further their careers.