of the 40 greatest women of country music. She has been a member of the Grand Ole Opry cast since 1965. In 2012, Smith was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Early life Connie Smith was born Constance June Meador to parents Wilma and Hobart Meador in Elkhart, Indiana. Her parents were originally from West Virginia, and when Smith was five months old, the family returned there. They would later move to Dungannon, Ohio. Her biological father was an alcoholic and he was abusive to Smith's family. "There were some tough times that I went through as a young child," she told an interviewer. Her mother divorced her biological father when she was a child and re-married to Tom Clark. Smith's stepfather brought eight children to the marriage, while Meador brought five (including Smith). The couple later had two more children together, totaling to fifteen children. Smith was influenced by music in her childhood. Her stepfather played mandolin, while her brother played fiddle, and her other brother played guitar. On Saturday nights, the family would tune into the Grand Ole Opry radio broadcast. She took up the guitar following a lawnmower accident, which nearly cut her leg off. While in the hospital recovering, she was given a guitar and learned how to play different chords. Smith did not perform publicly until high school when a friend invited her to sing Connie Francis's pop hit "My Happiness". With only one-tenth of a point behind the valedictorian, Smith graduated from Salem-Liberty High School in 1959 as the class salutatorian. Following graduation, she worked as telephone operator in Lowell, Ohio. She also worked as a drugstore clerk, a dental assistant and in a grocery store. At age 19, she married her first husband, Jerry Smith. Smith's husband encouraged her singing and she began performing with more frequency. Her professional performance was at the 1962 Washington County Fair. She then briefly joined the cast of the Saturday Night Jamboree, a local country music television program. Smith was then fired following her first performance, later theorizing it was because she was pregnant. She then successfully auditioned for and landed a spot on a similar program for WSAZ-TV. Despite performance opportunities, Smith intended to remain a housewife and mother. In August 1963, Smith entered a talent contest at the Frontier Ranch country music park near Columbus, Ohio. Performing Jean Shepard's "I Thought of You",