Tom Brady Has Attended This Kentucky Derby Party for More Than a Decade
By Carson Griffith. Photos by: Getty Images.
There’s Southern hospitality, and then there’s annually opening your private home to more than a thousand strangers each year for charity. Patricia Barnstable-Brown and her sister Priscilla Barnstable, perhaps known to some as the Doublemint Twins due to their stint in the 1970s as the identical blonds in the chewing gum commercials, first started the Barnstable Brown Kentucky Derby Eve Gala nearly three decades ago. With all the main celebrations taking place in Lexington, Kentucky, 78 miles away from where the Kentucky Derby is held every year, they wanted to create an alternative. “There was a vacuum for main Derby parties in Louisville,” says Chris Barnstable-Brown, the son of Patricia, who helps coordinate the gala every year. Because of the Barnstable twins' Hollywood connections, celebrity attendees like Dixie Carter and Lloyd Bridges helped make the evening a success.
Fast-forward 29 years, and as the Kentucky Derby has grown, so has the party: Each year, the night before the Kentucky Derby, the Barnstable-Brown family welcomes approximately 1,200 guests into their private home, including anywhere from 50 to 75 celebrities and VIPs. Anyone who is willing to purchase a ticket to support research on diabetes and obesity (which runs on Chris Barnstable-Brown's father’s side) is welcome; tickets start at $1,600, and are so coveted that guests have already begun purchasing them for the 2018 event. Unlike other events of similar ilk, this one doesn't have a website or any formal social media presence, as it's already grown past its capacity through word of mouth and local press (albeit it does have a website for further donations, as over the course of the past decade, the Barnstable-Brown family has raised $13 million for diabetes and obesity research.) As if a celebrity-laden event held in a still-lived-in Southern estate the night before a horse race couldn't get anymore outré, to purchase tickets each year, guests email the Barnstable-Browns directly, contact volunteers from Louisville working on the event, or call Chris Brownstable-Brown's grandmother.
What makes this party so unusual isn’t just the venue (the dessert is served in the Barnstable-Browns’ living room; they leave their private family photos scattered around the house; their couches are used as seating areas): Celebrities aren’t paid to attend or perform.
“The celebrities don’t just come and shake hands; they jump on stage and perform. I think it was John Goodman who first came and started singing Blues Brothers songs,” says Chris Barnstable-Brown, who annually helps to organize the event in the home he grew up in. “It’s a stately home, and people are in tuxes, but they come and let their hair down.”
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Musician guests aren’t expected to perform, but music from multiple award-winning artists has become the norm over the course of time. Despite the absence of a formal lineup for the evening, the estate is transformed annually regardless: “It’s an interesting thing for a home to turn the backyard into a stage and dance floor and the acoustics and all the technical things.”
It pays off once all the guests arrive: “We don’t book the performers, they are our guests. You have these cool combos of performers who have never performed together before. So they want to come back and have some drinks, and jump on stage,” he says. One of his favorite examples of this was a few years back: “Jimmy Fallon was on stage, of all people, and Kid Rock, who is attending again this year, jumped up and was like, ‘Give me the microphone!’, and Jimmy kind of danced off stage, in kind of a funny way.”
Unlike some parties that are held at people’s homes, the Barnstable-Browns don’t just allow their guests into their backyard, around their pool area, or on their first floor. “We block off just a couple of rooms for people changing or things like that, but it really is opening up the whole house,” says Barnstable-Brown. “It’s a Southern, come-to-our-house, very different vibe, and that’s part of the magic. A lot of our guests are repeats.”
That includes Tom Brady, who has come for what Barnstable-Brown estimates to be the past 14 years, and is expected again this year, along with first-time attendee Jeff Bridges, son of actor Lloyd Bridges, who attended the first gala held in the same home. “One of the things we try to do is have people from different walks of life,” says Barnstable-Brown. Larry David, Tracy Morgan, and pro golfer Ricky Fowler are all confirmed to attend the event for the first time this year as well.
Celebrity is obviously a huge draw for ticket buyers, but according to Barnstable-Brown, it’s not the only one.
“We have many guests who are like, 'I’m here for the music,' or 'I’m here for the dessert and food,'” says Barnstable-Brown. “The corn pudding is amazing.”
This story originally appeared on Architectural Digest.
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