By Lori Lovely
R
obert and Tammy Johnson met as teenagers working at a skating rink in the early '80s. Ever since then, she has dreamed of owning her own rink. “Skating gets in your blood,” she says. Although she worked as a mail carrier for 20 years before opening Wheels & Thrills in 2017, her goal never changed. “I always wanted to open a rink.” It wasn’t easy. When Robert was 18, he bought a suit to wear when he applied for a bank loan, but it wasn’t until 2013 that the couple was able to purchase a skating rink in Pryor, Oklahoma. They bought it directly from the owners.
Open for business They sold the Pryor rink in 2016 and opened Wheels & Thrills in 2017. The 26,000-sq.-ft. family entertainment center is highlighted by a 150’ x 75’ hardwood maple floor, and state-ofthe-art lighting, sound, and special effects. The Food Factory restaurant features two ovens, six burners, and four fryers capable of producing what Tammy calls a “huge, diverse menu” that includes pizza, a shrimp basket, Angus burgers, and hand-dipped corndogs and other delectables. It was the first time in nearly two decades that the town had a skating rink; the old one had
closed in the mid-1990s. That meant that a lot of the local residents didn’t know how to skate. “When we hired people,” Tammy reminisces, “only one knew how to skate.” When the rink first opened, the floor guards wore tennis shoes because they couldn’t skate. It’s one of the reasons she offers free skating lessons to this day. While the staff was learning to ambulate on wheels, Tammy and Robert were applying the lessons they’d learned as rink owners in Pryor – like scheduling, budgeting, cleaning, cooking, people skills, and how to fix things. Robert also runs another business, but at the rink, he takes care of skate sales and the
Even though they purchased land for a rink in Owassa in 2014, they could not secure a loan. “We had to run [the Pryor rink] for three years before we could open ours,” Tammy explains. Having business experience meant they could qualify for a loan with a lower deposit. There were other hurdles to overcome. In 2015, Tammy was diagnosed with breast cancer. “Wheels & Thrills became my reason to keep going,” she reflects.
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GROUNDBREAKING CEREMONY FOR WHEELS AND THRILLS
Volume 30 - Issue 3 - March/April 2022
