A Town with Heart

Written by Katey Rich

It’s not your typical family reunion. There are costumes, lights, a live band and a lot of songs, plus an audience that returns year after year to watch it happen onstage. But when the Heart Show happens at the end of February every year, it really is a reunion of what everyone involved calls “The Heart Family.” 

Jimmy Moore knows there’s a difference between real family and Heart Family, but with the Moores, it can sometimes be hard to see it. His father Jim Moore, started directing the musical show in the late 1970s, taking over what had previously been a fashion show fundraiser for the Aiken Women’s Heart Association. Jimmy was 5 at the time, and he and his sister Julie would spend the rehearsals at church fellowship halls hanging out in the background, or playing basketball during breaks. It was only a matter of time before both of them were part of the show, eventually bringing their own kids to rehearsals too.

“It really was our family,” Moore says now. “When I got married, our big wedding shower was put on by Heart Show people. The friends that I’ve had for 45 years are the Heart Show friends.”

Jimmy took over writing the Heart Show script from his dad a few years ago, but the senior Jim Moore is still the show’s director, and it’s still his original, brilliant ideas that keeps audiences coming back year after year. Each year’s play has a new theme or setting — this year’s was New Orleans — and selection of new songs, ranging from gospel classics to semi-recent pop hits. But the cast remains more or less the same, all drawn from the Aiken community. You don’t just come to the Heart Show because you know you’ll hear some great songs, hear some so-bad-they’re-good corny jokes in the script or contribute to more than $100,000 raised each year for the American Heart Association. You come to watch your neighbor, your realtor, your teacher or your grandmother take the stage and turn into someone completely new. 

“When you see people out shopping or at the post office, somebody will stop you almost every week, if not more often and say, ‘You’re in the Heart Show!’” says Diane Miniard, who gave her last performance in February after 40 years in the cast. She remembers grocery shopping when her sons were younger and their astonishment when she stopped to have a conversation with a Heart Show fan. “It was just a real boost,” Miniard says. “It made you feel good that you were doing something that made people happy.”

Everyone has their particular favorite Heart Shows from over the years. One that came up over and over again was Heart Family Reunion from the early ‘90s, which put the family energy of the Heart Show cast right up there onstage as they embodied tacky cousins, squabbling spouses and cranky grandparents. 

That was Jimmy Moore’s first year in the cast, something he never expected because “I can’t sing for anything.” In a story straight out of All About Eve, that year’s Thursday performance had been canceled by a snowstorm; an extra Sunday performance was added to make up for it, but cast member Tony Long already had tickets booked for an anniversary trip to Hawaii. Jimmy, who had been at every rehearsal as he had been for most of his life, was the closest thing to an understudy they had. 

“Thursday through Sunday, I just studied lines again and again,” he remembers. The next year, just like every other cast member, he got a phone call from his father asking if he’d like to come back again. And a new member of the Heart Family was officially inducted. 

Miniard has fond memories of teaming up with Clyde Ward to play Maude and Clifford, which she describes as “a henpecked husband and his overbearing wife. I was clearly in charge and wouldn’t let him finish a sentence.” They revived the characters two more times over the years, a testament to their vaudeville-worthy comedic chemistry and an in-joke for the loyal Heart Show audiences who got to see them play the hits. 

Everyone agrees that the best Heart Shows are when everyone gets their distinctively kooky character to play. In 2001, the show had a haunted house theme, clearing the path for a whole cast of classic monsters and some of the funniest songs that have ever been part of the show. Believe me, I was part of it.

Like Jimmy Moore, I grew up hearing all of these stories and so many more, to the point that you can’t quite remember which ones are real and which are more like tall tales. Like Diane Miniard’s children, I grew up watching my mom transform into a celebrity, taking our seats at the Etheredge Center every year to watch her onstage and look out for her adjusting her hair — her secret wave to us. 

My mom, Sallye Rich, started as a writer for the Heart Show back in the early ‘90s; like everyone else back then she was roped in by Jim Moore, who thought she could bring a “woman’s point of view” to the script. For years she raised three children and worked as an elementary school teacher, and then also spent two nights a week each January and February at Heart Show rehearsals. The real miracle came after the opening night show on Thursday night, performing a show and going out with the cast, then still showing up to teach 4th grade on Friday morning. We suspect enough time has passed that it’s OK to admit that when her students left for art or music class, she snuck in a 15-minute nap during her planning period.

When I was a sophomore in high school, like Jimmy, I was drafted as a replacement for someone who couldn’t do the show — and once I was in the door, there was no way I was leaving. In the haunted house, I was one of the captured humans spending most of the show in a pretend jail cell; the next year, the show was a Survivor parody, and I played the spoiled daughter of the show’s producer. After one performance I signed autographs for some little girls who had been in the audience, as starstruck as I was at their age. 

Even after I left Aiken for college and was no longer part of the cast, Heart Show has still felt like an inevitable seasonal event, like putting up Christmas decorations or planning a summer beach trip. It’s also a portal into another world entirely. Going backstage at the Etheredge Center, with racks of costumes and wigs and the smell of hairspray and stage makeup, was intoxicating. On Saturday, between the matinee and the evening performance, the volunteer members of the Aiken Women’s Heart Board — who also provide costumes, hand out programs, and do a million other invaluable tasks — serve lunch to the cast and crew. I’m still not sure I’ve ever had a better lunch in my life. 

Once I was old enough to be in the cast and hang out with the cast after dress rehearsals, where the same dirty jokes and sing-alongs were repeated year after year, it was like being inducted into a secret society. It was hard to believe these incredibly funny and talented people were actually just regular Aiken residents like me. 

For a while, Brooke Lundy, who started in the Heart Show when she was just 11, was the exception to the rule — she moved to Los Angeles and later New York to pursue a career as a singer, but returned for the Heart Show year after year. “You can feel invisible and lost in the shuffle of trying to make it in ‘show business’,” says Lundy, who has since returned home and now regularly performs around Aiken and Augusta. “My heart was always here, and they helped build my confidence to face the challenges of being in those far-away places better than any training could ever do.”

Lundy jokes that the Savannah River Site might explain the seemingly unusual amount of talent based in Aiken— “I feel there needs to be more talent testing done to the water here!” But everyone who’s ever been part of the Heart Show, Aiken Community Playhouse or the Aiken Symphony Orchestra agrees that Aiken seems to punch above its weight compared to other small Southern cities. 

“I think we do have something special,” says Miniard, who grew up outside of Nashville — where “everybody thought they could sing” — but never pursued a professional singing career. She’s been a realtor with Meybohm for 28 years, but once a year does what everyone moves to Nashville with dreams of doing: singing in front of an adoring crowd. 

Things do eventually change with the Heart Show, of course. Cast members retire or move away, and younger people are joining the cast. Now there are two third-generation Heart Show stars — Heather Moore, Jimmy’s daughter, and Marshall Mahoney, whose mom Betsy Wilson-Mahoney got her start in the show alongside her own mother, Mary-Jo Wilson.

My mom says she never expected to still be doing the show as she approaches her ‘70s, but also can’t imagine what would make her leave. And even if she did, the after-party might show up at her door anyway. For years, the cast’s post-show hangout was Eejay’s at the old Kalmia Mall, where the owner EJ Jones would stay open late just for them. The restaurant closed after Jones’s death in 2010, and eventually the after-party hotspot became my parents’ house, where there’s a tambourine and a set of bongos by the piano and the music lasts until well after midnight. 

My sister and I both travel back to be part of Heart Show weekend whenever we can; another one of Jimmy Moore’s daughters lives in New York City and does the same. Brooke Lundy doesn’t perform in the show anymore but still calls the “Heart Family” as close as blood relatives. When my children and their cousins get to come backstage and see their grandmother wearing a crazy wig, I feel confident we’re passing on the Heart Show love to the next generation. But they’ve still got to be a little older before we let them hear the best jokes at the after-parties. 

Aiken Heart Show Dates February 25- March 1, 2026