It's 4:30 p.m. on Super Bowl Sunday, and Santa's Pub is quiet. It's a sharp contrast to what you'd find most nights of the week, when the room is packed wall to wall with karaoke-singin', beer-swillin' revelers.
Four years ago, at an age when most are pondering retirement, Denzel Irwin — better known as Santa, the proprietor of Santa's Pub — opened his namesake bar in a nondescript trailer near the fairgrounds, and today Santa's is among the most famous dive bars in the country, written about by the likes of Esquire, Maxim and, of course, the Scene. But the whole thing might not have happened had Irwin not reunited with his first love, Angelina Stillings.
If you've ever had a conversation with Irwin you've heard some good stories. There was the time he almost lost his foot in a horse-riding accident, or that night when pop star Kesha hugged him and got glitter all over his beard. He's been shot (twice) and stabbed, but sitting at a table near the stage with Stillings, his partner in business and life, Irwin tells a story so incredible it could cause an unbeliever in love to question everything.
Both Tennessee natives, Irwin and Stillings first met in the '60s when they were enrolled at the Tennessee Preparatory School. In 1969, 20-year-old Irwin proposed to 17-year-old Stillings, but the engagement was interrupted when Irwin joined the army and the young couple lost touch during the three years he was overseas. When Irwin returned, he couldn't find Stillings.
As the years passed, Irwin pursued several different careers, from driving ambulances to running Lower Broadway bars back when the area had more grit than glitter. (The former job certainly helped the latter; he once cleaned out a gunshot wound with whiskey and sewed his own stitches.) Irwin married, had children, divorced, moved to Florida and eventually moved back to Nashville. In 2000, he was making a living painting houses, and though he hadn't seen her in 30 years, Stillings was still on his mind.
"This is the honest-to-God truth: I was driving down a street here in Nashville, right before I was going to paint this lady's house," Irwin recalls. "I looked up and said, 'Lord, I never asked you for nothing. But if you let me find Angelina, I'll never ask you for nothing else.' It was about a week later, I was painting the woman's house, and we were talking about our first loves. I mentioned [Stillings'] name, and turned out, the lady knew her."
That woman called Stillings and put Irwin on the phone. The two talked for several minutes before Irwin revealed who he was, much to Stillings' shock.
"We talked about a week," Irwin says. "Spent the weekend together, been back together ever since. Been about 15 years now. But we never broke our engagement; that's why we say we're engaged for 45 years."
It was Stillings who encouraged Irwin to buy the bar, and the two have run Santa's Pub together since, now aided by Stillings' 21-year-old grandson, among the youngest of their Brady Bunchesque clan that includes three of Irwin's children, three of Stillings' and 14 grandchildren. They're also aided by regular customers — they call them their "kids" — who keep things in line when rowdy bar patrons violate any of the house rules, including cussing onstage or acting inappropriately toward a lady.
"You don't use the 'MF,' the 'F,' or 'G-D' — those three words, you don't say in front of a lady," Irwin insists. "You do not touch a woman in my bar. You don't aggravate them, and women know that. That's why two-thirds of my customers are women. ... I've never had an argument or a fight in this bar, and I've got people from age 21 to 86."
Ensuring that Santa's remains a douchebag-free zone (seriously, there's a sign on the wall) has resulted many lovebirds meeting in Irwin's bar — there's even been a couple of mid-karaoke proposals from the stage — but when it comes to marriage, Irwin appears a little gun shy. That's right, Irwin and Stillings still aren't married.
"I think the reason most people fall out of love is, when you get married, you say, 'You can't do this no more, you can't do that no more,' " Irwin explains. "So what you fell in love with ain't there anymore. You've changed. You can't make her happy if you're not happy. You've got to be yourself; you can't change each other."
And, according to the world's most patient fiancée, there's another reason for the long engagement: "He said, 'When Gene Simmons gets married, I will marry you,' " Stillings says, noting the KISS frontman's legendary engagement to Shannon Tweed, whom he married in 2011 after 28 years together. Just before the two begin to dissolve into laughter, Stillings continues, "So, you know, Gene Simmons got married. So now he's saying, 'We've got to wait and see if it works out.' "
