Main Street Station hopes its rebranding as event venue keeps longtime McHenry business going

Kelly Covalt needs customers to come back to McHenry’s Main Street Station.

It was known for decades as an area-favorite Mexican restaurant inside the town’s Metra station at 4005 Main St., but Covalt decided last year to stop serving food.

Instead, the bar is open from noon to close Tuesday through Saturday, and Main Street Station is available as an event venue for people looking for a smaller, more intimate space.

Given it has seating for about 80 people, Covalt said she can’t do large wedding parties, but she can offer small wedding receptions, celebrations of life, bridal and baby showers, and anniversary and wedding parties.

“I need some traction on the event space,” Covalt said, adding that the spot her dad and a friend started may completely shutter if she doesn’t get it.

Floyd E. “Trey” Covalt III and Tom Low opened the restaurant in 1987. She has photos of her dad and his friends building the U-shaped bar inside the station.

Kelly and her two sisters waitressed at the restaurant in their teenage years, but it was Kelly who managed the restaurant with her dad after she graduated college.

It has so much untapped potential.”

—  Jenny Ricketts, sister of Main Street Station owner Kelly Covalt

Trey Covalt died unexpectedly in April 2020, only a month into the COVID-19 lockdowns.

Kelly had become her dad’s “right hand” on the operations side of the business over the years, and her name was on the corporation paperwork. She wanted to keep it open, too.

“I never thought of closing it, but it was really, really hard,” she said.

She said her father had “kept the business aspects mostly to himself.”

“I was wandering around trying to figure out what needed to be done” to keep the restaurant going, Kelly said.

Government help offered to restaurants during the COVID-19 pandemic helped keep the business going, but with rising labor and food costs, Kelly decided to close the kitchen in November 2022.

She closed down entirely for a few months to repaint, remove some of the clutter and get rid of equipment from the kitchen.

“I couldn’t handle turning people away at the door every single day” when she told them Main Street Station no longer served food, Kelly said.

After the kitchen closed, her younger sister, Jenny Ricketts, was helping at the bar during a private party.

“Friends had rented out the bar on a Sunday ... [and] they had a band come play for the party,” Ricketts said. “It was the happiest I had seen her, there behind the bar. I told her, ‘This is what you should do. Run it as an event space.’”

Event space is something McHenry needs, Ricketts said.

“It is such a unique opportunity instead of having to go to a huge event venue or a small room in the back of a restaurant [for private parties],” Ricketts said. “It has so much untapped potential.”

The sisters know there are former patrons who are upset that Kelly closed the restaurant.

“I miss the food, too. It was amazing. But I also know it was dying, and people are salty about it,” Ricketts said.

Kelly said her accountant told her she may need to close completely if the venue business doesn’t take off. She needs to get more people renting the station for their events and old regulars at the restaurant to stop in for a drink.

“We are trying to turn a corner,” Kelly said. “[So far], is not quite enough.”