The Grand Ole Opry, the world’s longest running broadcast, debuted on WSM radio in Nashville on this day in history, Nov. 28, 1925. 

“The showcase was originally named the Barn Dance, after a Chicago radio program called the National Barn Dance that had begun broadcasting the previous year,” according to History.com. 

“Impressed by the popularity of the Chicago-based National Barn Dance, producers at WSM radio in Nashville decided to create their own version of the show to cater to southern audiences who could not receive the Chicago signal.”

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The Barn Dance was renamed the Grand Ole Opry two years later, courtesy of an unscripted moment of on-air inspiration by host George D. Hay on Dec. 10, 1927. 

“Following an NBC broadcast of Walter Damrosch’s Music Appreciation Hour [a classical music program], Hay proclaimed on-air, ‘For the past hour we have been listening to the music taken largely from the Grand Opera, but from now on we will present the grand ole opry,’” writes the Opry website in its history of the moment that reshaped the future of American music. 

Hay’s turn of phrase, “grand ole opry,” affecting a rural southern American accent, resonated with listeners and proved an instant sensation. 

The Barn Dance broadcast was soon renamed the Grand Ole Opry — and has been going strong ever since. 

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Hay “was a remarkable visionary and colorful romantic who played a vital role in the commercializing and promotion of country music,” writes the Country Music Hall of Fame.

The Barn Dance broadcast was soon renamed the Grand Ole Opry and has been going strong ever since.

The Grand Ole Opry was originally broadcast from the fifth-floor radio station studio of the National Life & Accident Insurance Company in Nashville.

The growth of the Opry surged in 1932, when WSM, the first clear-channel station in Tennessee, added a 50,000-watt transmitter. 

The new technology made WSM “a nation-spanning giant,” says the station’s website.

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Now, the Grand Ole Opry could be heard across large swaths of the country, far beyond its Nashville home. 

It became a national institution.

The broadcast grew so popular that it moved to the Ryman Auditorium in downtown Nashville in 1943. 

A Thousand Horses perform at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, August 27, 2022. The Grand Ole Opry moved from the Ryman Auditorium in downtown Nashville to its current Opryland location in March 1974.  (Kerry J. Byrne/Fox News Digital)

The Grand Ole Opry built its own theater and country-music campus, Opryland, in 1974, about 10 miles east of the city center. 

The Opryland theater is still a showcase for American songcraft today, ranging from tradition Appalachian fiddlers to the top hit-makers in contemporary country music.

The Grand Ole Opry built its own theater and country-music campus, Opryland, in 1974.

“Both the Grand Ole Opry and the National Barn Dance aired on Saturday nights and featured folk music, fiddling, and the relatively new genre of country-western music,” reports History.com.

“Both shows created a growing audience for a uniquely American style of music and were launching grounds for many of America’s most-loved musicians — the singing cowboy Gene Autry got his first big break on the National Barn Dance.”

Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton all generated national acclaim from early-career performances at the Grand Ole Opry. 

American singer and songwriter Dolly Parton poses with American country music singer-songwriter Loretta Lynn circa 1997 at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee.  (Photo by Ron Davis/Getty Images)

A statue of Lynn, who died last month, stands outside Ryman Auditorium today. 

Cash, as an unknown teenager in 1950, famously met future wife June Carter, already a celebrated country-music performer, backstage at Ryman Auditorium. 

Johnny Cash’s image is seen everywhere in the Music City, including in this ad during a Grand Ole Opry performance promoting Cash sites in downtown Nashville.  (Kerry J. Byrne/Fox News Digital)

Their relationship would become one of the most celebrated romances in American pop-culture history. 

Guinness World Records recognized the Grand Ole Opry as the world’s longest-running broadcast in 2004. 

Broadcaster George Hay, left, with performers Uncle Dave Macon with Paul Warmack in an early WSM broadcast. (Grand Ole Opry archives)

The unique name Grand Ole Opry, created in a moment of inspiration by host Hay, solidified the broadcast’s rural American identity that’s been so critical to its success.

“Hay had a very romantic and nostalgic vision of rural life, music and culture, and he carefully cultivated that in the early Opry programming,” Opry archivist Jen Larson told Fox News Digital.

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A Florida woman is behind bars after she allegedly stabbed her boyfriend with rabies needles because he was looking at other women.

Sandra Jimenez, 44, was charged with aggravated battery in connection with a Saturday incident at a home shared with her boyfriend, according to a Miami-Dade Police Department arrest affidavit seen by FOX 35 Orlando.

Officers responded to a hospital following a report of a man who was stabbed in the eye with a needle. The victim told police that Jimenez used their dogs’ rabies needles to pierce his right eyelid during an argument about him “looking at other women,” the affidavit read.

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Jimenez allegedly jumped on her boyfriend of eight years while he was lying on the couch and stabbed him with the needles before leaving their home when she “realized what she had done.”

The victim called 911 and was rushed to a hospital, where he spoke with officers about the attack.

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Jimenez was arrested for the alleged attack and booked into the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on $7,500 bond. (Roberto Koltun/El Nuevo Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

Police later found Jimenez sleeping in her car outside the home and arrested her, the affidavit said. Jimenez claimed that her boyfriend’s injuries were “self-inflicted” when she was questioned by police about the alleged attack.

She is in custody at Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on $7,500 bond, according to arrest records.

FIRST ON FOX – A group of Republican attorneys general are pushing the Biden administration to back down on a new rule they say will effectively exclude Christian families from fostering kids and jeopardize the foster care system nationwide.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, along with 18 of his GOP colleagues, sent a letter Monday to the Department of Health and Human Services alerting them that a new proposed rule that alters requirements for foster care families violates the Constitution and discriminates against people who practice the Christian faith. 

In addition to discriminating against religion, the attorneys general argue that the proposed rule “will harm children by limiting the number of available foster homes, harm families by risking kinship placements, and harm states by increasing costs and decreasing care options.”

“These injuries will be suffered while HHS fails to solve a problem that the proposed rule does not even prove exists in foster care,” the AGs write. 

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The rule, Safe and Appropriate Foster Care Placement Requirements, would mandate that foster parents and families utilize a foster child’s “identified pronouns, chosen name, and allow the child to dress in an age-appropriate manner that the child believes reflects their self-identified gender identity and expression.”

According to the letter, the rule “seeks to accomplish indirectly what the Supreme Court found unconstitutional just two years ago: remove faith-based providers from the foster care system if they will not conform their religious beliefs on sexual orientation and gender identity.” 

The Supreme Court in 2021, in a case called Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, ruled that Philadelphia’s refusal to contract with a Catholic social services group unless it agreed to certify same-sex couples as foster parents violated the First Amendment.

The letter notes that HHS anticipates that the number of children in the foster care system would increase to roughly 416,500 by 2027. As of 2022, there were reportedly 391,000 children in foster care.

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The Supreme Court ruled that Philadelphia’s refusal to contract with a Catholic social services group violated the First Amendment. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

The attorneys general argue that “caring for children in need is a duty of the Christian faith,” and moreover, that the foster care system would be crippled without Christian families opening their home to foster care kids. 

“The foster care system depends on individuals and organizations of faith,” the letter argues. 

For example, the AGs cite that in Arkansas, one faith-based group was credited with recruiting almost half of the foster homes in the state, and in New Mexico, every private placement agency is Christian. 

According to a 2002 study cited in the letter, foster parents who are recruited through a church or other religious organization foster children for 2.6 years longer than the average foster parent. And practicing Christians are three times more likely to seriously consider fostering than the general population, according to a study by the Barna Group. 

“States need faith-based organizations in their foster care system. The proposed rule will drive individuals and organizations of faith away, which will increase the strain on the system by reducing the number of available foster homes,’ the attorneys general wrote. 

“The federal government should be searching for ways to increase the number of foster homes, not decrease them,” they said. 

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Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Attorney General Marshall accused President Biden of “harass[ing]” his state of Alabama. 

“Joe Biden continues to harass our State and others like it by implicitly threatening to withhold federal funding for children in need if we do not conform to his ideology, but our values are not for sale,” Marshall told Fox News Digital in a statement. 

“Since the first century, Christians across the globe have answered the call to provide a home and a family to children who had neither. Alabama boasts a particularly strong faith-based foster care and adoption community, and I will fight this Administration for them every step of the way,” he added. 

HHS did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.