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You may not know his name or the restaurant in New York City that he turned into a home away from home for customers and employees alike for more than five decades. But when he died in 2021, his funeral was held at St. Patrick's Cathedral, with Cardinal Timothy Dolan leading the proceedings. The FDR Drive, Harlem River Drive and the top level of the George Washington Bridge were all closed for his funeral procession, something generally done for heads of state.
And this past week, a street in New York was named after him, because his life story embodies everything that's good about the city he loved and the country that adopted him.
At a time when many cynics believe the American dream is dead, Jimmy Neary would certainly have disagreed. He was born in 1930, one of six children, and grew up on a farm in a small town in Tubbercurry, County Sligo, Ireland. His dad died when he was young, and he knew early on he didn't want to work in the family business. "He loved dealing with people, so the thought of working on a farm never appealed to him," Una Neary, Jimmy's daughter, told the Our American Stories podcast.
He would only complete the sixth grade, but no one who knew him considered him uneducated. "I've always considered my father as being one of the smartest men I know, and it wasn't from a classroom," said Una, a smart woman herself who has worked as a partner and senior executive at some big investment firms in New York. She also leads a double life as a Neary's waitress by night.
Neary first got the idea to be the man he'd become on trips into town with his mother to get groceries. "Part of the store had a bar and a little lounge, and Dad would watch the people engage in conversation, joking and the pouring of drinks, and he literally knew from a young age that's what he wanted to do with his life," Una said.
Neary's first job was driving a cab. "My dad was tiny—we called him the Living Leprechaun—and he needed books underneath him to see over the dashboard," Una said. But his ambitions weren't at all tiny. "He knew that Tubbercurry was a great place to grow up, but knew it wasn't big enough for him," she said. "He wanted to experience something different."
Neary's life changed when a visitor from America mentioned she'd love to take him there one day. Asked what he'd do if he moved there, Neary said, "I don't know, but I'll figure it out."
He paid for his passage to America by selling 14 lambs he'd raised on the family farm. The proceeds were enough in 1954 for a one-way ticket on the USS Olympia to New York City, where Neary found work at the New York Athletic Club as a pool manager.
After a stint in Army, he returned to the club, where he met the man who'd forever change his life. "P.J. Moriarty was a legendary restaurateur and loved my dad, and he told the club manager he wanted my dad to work with him at night," Una said. "P.J. taught my father the ropes."
Moriarty also changed the trajectory of Neary's love life. His first date with his future wife, Eileen, was a disaster. Moriarty and his wife, Trudy, intervened. "They loved my mom and knew she'd be great for my dad, so one night P.J. invited him to go out with his wife for dinner, and when dad gets there, the table was set for four and in walks Mom," Una said. The rest was history. The two got married in 1966; moved to Demarest, New Jersey; and had four kids.
By the mid-1960s, Neary and fellow bartender Brian Mulligan decided it was time to run their own restaurant and found a location on East 57th Street. "It was the ground floor of a brownstone, and Dad could see the restaurant the second he walked in the door," Una said.
"He knew exactly what he wanted: an upscale Irish restaurant. He wasn't looking for a traditional Irish pub. He wanted it to be fine dining. And they decided the name would be Neary's because there were enough places named Mulligan's in town," she recalled, laughing.
Neary's opened its doors on St. Patrick's Day in 1967. Just 13 years after arriving in America, Neary was the co-owner of a restaurant in America's biggest city, in one of the fanciest parts of town, Sutton Place.
He was living the American dream, but it involved constant work. "The early years were tough—my father and Brian were working seven days a week, round the clock," Una said. "Brian's sister, Liz, was one of our first employees. She started in 1967, and she's still with us. That's the type of person my father was. When they came as an employee—or the customers that started growing in numbers over the years—they fell in love with Neary's and my father, his hospitality, his charm, his storytelling. And they felt like they were coming into my father's private dining room. They were invited guests."
What was the source of Neary's love of people? "As important as the business was, equally important was his faith," Una said. "We're an Irish Catholic family, and my parents' routine was very set. Every day, they'd get up, get dressed and go to Mass. Dad would do the readings in church almost every morning, and after they finished Mass, Dad and Mom would go to breakfast, and then Dad would go to the restaurant and Mom would get in her car from the diner and raise us while Dad was working. But their time together was their precious time—Mass and breakfast every morning—and it was a tradition they carried on until she passed away 15 years ago from cancer."
One story she told about her father's love for her mom nearly brought Una to tears. "There was this beautiful picture of my mom and dad—a wedding picture of the two of them—and before he left the house every day, he would lean in and kiss the picture and kiss my mom," she said. "When he came home at night, he stood in front of the picture and he would talk to her, and it touched me because he wanted to share the day with her and tell her everything she was obviously seeing from heaven."
Customers would sometimes ask Neary if he was interested in dating other women. "Are you kidding me?" he'd reply. "I had the love of my life. I'm interested in no one but my Eileen."
Una tells a story about working at Neary's on Fridays in the coatroom at the age of 12. "I got to watch my dad deal with people, and every person felt like they were the most special person in the room. It didn't matter who walked in that door—a doorman, or President Clinton once walked in, so you could be the president of the United States—you were treated with the same love, respect and care, and that's what set my father apart. He didn't distinguish anybody by their title or what they did: They were family when they walked in that door. I learned that from standing in the coatroom watching my father. It was a lesson of a lifetime."
His greatest joy came when he got a call from the restaurant's landlord in 1986. "I'll sell you the building for $1,375,000, and you have two weeks to let me know," the landlord told him. His first call wasn't to his wife but the president of the Bank of Ireland in New York—Bill Burke, who grew up not far from Neary in Ireland. "I need to borrow $1,375,000," my dad told Burke. "Is it to buy that brownstone on 57th Street?" Burke asked. "Yes, it is," my dad replied. He got the loan.
Neary never called his wife in the middle of the day, and when she answered, she asked her husband, "Is everything OK?" Una recalled, laughing. "Well, I just borrowed $1,375,000 to buy the building," he replied. "Well, you broke us, but you've made the kids wealthy," his wife joked back. He would repay the loan long before the balance was due.
"Jimmy, will you ever retire?" customers often asked him. "Retire?" Neary would reply. "First of all, what would I do, and second, not a chance. The only way they're getting me outta of here is in a wooden overcoat."
There were a lot of traditions at Neary's, and one was to regularly sing "God Bless America." "Every customer, without exception, would stop what they were doing and join in," Una said. "And Dad would always belt it out, because he loved America."
Una talked about her father's love of country. "If anyone had a bad word to say about America, he'd straighten them out. 'This is the greatest country in the world, it gives you the opportunities of a lifetime, and if you work hard and do your part, you'll enjoy the riches," he would say."
Dignitaries and celebrities, even astronaut John Glenn, called Neary's home. Author Mary Higgins Clark was so enamored of him that she wrote him into 25 of her books.
Jimmy Neary died in his sleep on October 1, 2021, weeks after celebrating his 91st birthday. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke at the jam-packed funeral Mass at St. Patrick's.
"For 40 years, I kept coming back to Neary's for the boiled chicken," Bloomberg said. "But it wasn't the chicken alone I kept coming back for, it was Jimmy. He had a genuine and overflowing love of people. No one was more fun loving than Jimmy or harder working. He was the classic American story."
Cardinal Dolan did what he always does when giving his eulogy at St. Patrick's: He was teaching the flock. "Hospitality is a virtue often extolled in the holy Bible—to make people feel welcome, at home, to make them feel special like they're really somebody," he told the crowd. "Jimmy Neary exemplified a bunch of virtues, but hospitality was at the top. After all, Jesus taught, 'Whoever welcomes you, welcomes me.' When a guest comes, Christ comes."
Dolan ended with words fitting for a Catholic restaurateur who honored his God by loving and serving his fellow man. "We hope one day to have you welcome us again at the door of the heavenly kingdom."
