A New Chapter: The Story of Mary Jo McGuire's

People ask me all the time why we opened a second bar after 65 years of just one, and the truth is we didn't really open something new. We just gave the next generation a place of their own to carry the same thing forward.

In 2025, my grandsons Patrick and Connor opened Mary Jo McGuire's up in Lincoln Park. We named it for their grandmother — my Mary Jo — because if you ask me what actually made this whole thing work for 65 years on Division Street, it was never me. It was her. I've said it plenty of times and I'll say it again: the secret to my success was Mary Jo.

Patrick and Connor didn't set out to reinvent anything at Mary Jo McGuire's. They grew up in this bar. They watched their grandmother and me treat every stranger who walked through that door like they already belonged, and that's exactly what they've built up in Lincoln Park — same hospitality, same hard work, just a new room to do it in. Third generation now, chasing the same thing I was chasing back in 1961.

We're proud to call Mary Jo McGuire's our sister bar. If you love what we've built at 20 W Division, go see what the boys have done with it up on Lincoln — you'll recognize the family in it right away.