Margaret Lovato Has Been Serving Customers For 50 Years At Cheyenne's Diamond Horseshoe

Cheyenne Frontier Days led to Margaret Lovato’s first job when she was just 13 years old.

Lovato still has that job now, almost 50 years later. She’s the Diamond Horseshoe Cafe’s longest-serving employee, outliving several of the 70-year-old restaurant’s owners.

“My mom and dad came here to eat one day, and it was like Frontier Days and there was no help,” Lovato told Cowboy State Daily. “Arlen and Bertha Wilson owned it then, and so my mom says, ‘I have a 13-year-old daughter, do you need help?’”

Lovato, at the time, had been babysitting three boys since she was 10 years old, and their shenanigans were making her crazy.

“You know how three boys can be right?” she said. “I’m like, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore.’”

So, when she heard there was a job bussing tables, she was all for giving it a try.

What she recalls from that first day on the job was just how busy the little diner was.

“Back then, there was no Dell Range yet, and this place was really hopping,” she said. “It was crazy. And a lot of times, the diner didn’t close until 9 o’clock.”

Lovato would work until closing, then go home to do her schoolwork before bed. 

She Knows Everyone

Before too long, Lovato was doing such a good job, the owners decided to try her out as a cashier.

“I was a cashier for years,” Lovato said. 

Another labor crunch, though, propelled her into a waitressing job. At first, she wasn’t sure she could handle it, and she was a bit nervous. But before long, she was bantering back and forth with customers like she’d known them all her life.

“That’s the thing I like best about working here,” she admitted. “It’s all the cool people you meet. I’ve met people from China and Ireland. And it’s like, ‘Oh, your accent, where are you from?’ Then we start talking and some of them come back year after year.”

Movers And Shakers

But Lovato doesn’t just meet people who come from far away. She’s also met many of the movers and shakers of Wyoming, among them current and former lawmakers like Stan Blake and Jim Byrd.

What Byrd recalls loving about Lovato is her spunky attitude, served alongside plates piled high with stick-to-your-ribs comfort food. 

“It’s the kind of food your grandma makes,” Byrd said. “And she’s just got that good kind of snarkiness to go with it. She likes to poke fun. She loves a good joke. Her whole thing is just about bringing a smile to your face. And it didn’t matter if you’re in a three-piece suit or look like you slept under a bridge. She treated everyone with the same respect.”

When Byrd was a lawmaker, he often ate at the Diamond Horseshoe Cafe with other colleagues, and he would also bring mayoral or other candidates with him.

“We’d trade barbs back and forth,” Byrd said.

Lovato always had a great comeback, and often razzed them about “being in charge, but not getting anything done.”

It made the meal fun, Byrd said.

“It’s almost like you’re not in a restaurant at all,” Byrd said. “It’s more like you’re a guest, going to someone’s house for dinner. If you go to the Diamond Horseshoe and you don’t enjoy your meal, there’s something wrong with you.”

Serious When It Mattered

Lovato had a light touch when it came to more serious matters, too, though, and just the right amount of discretion.  

“There was this older guy who used to come in there, and he had some health problems,” Byrd said. “And he always wanted to sit down and talk with me about politics, but he didn’t really understand how politics worked.”

After learning the man lost the right to vote because of something he’d done as a young man, Byrd brought a bill that would allow felons who have completed their sentences to regain their voting rights. 

“He was one of the reasons I brought that bill,” Byrd said. “So I knew this guy very well, but what I didn’t know, and I accidentally ran across one day, is he often didn’t have enough money to pay his tab.”

Lovato, realizing the man’s situation, just quietly kept the man’s tab running.

“They weren’t big grandiose meals, but he would get something,” Byrd said. “And he’d come in and pay on it every so often, when he had some money.” 

Learning of this, Byrd asked what the tab was, and, hearing that it was just $30, he picked it up himself now and then.

“That was always just between Margaret and I,” Byrd said. “And I know there were others who she ran a tab for, and that goes back to old-school restaurants.”

It’s something he hopes other younger coworkers at the restaurant are taking notes on, and he believes it’s all part of what makes the restaurant such a gem.

Cheyenne’s Cheers

Old-school is what customers new and old appreciate about Lovato. 

“We call this place Cheyenne’s Cheers,” Art Proctor said. “It’s the place where everyone knows your name.”

He and his wife Cyndy have been coming to the Diamond Horseshoe Cafe for the last four years, but say that it feels like they’ve known Lovato much longer than that. 

“She will help anyone regardless of who you are,” Cyndy said. “She’s got the warmest heart I’ve ever seen.”

Lovato said she has no definite plans to retire any time soon but added that her parents are getting up there in age, and she does think about taking a hiatus at least, to spend more time with them.

“This has been convenient for me to take care of them,” she said. “I can go straight there after I get off work.”

Lovato said she’d probably come back to the restaurant, assuming her own health is still good at some point.

“It’s been a lot of fun,” Lovato said, smiling. “Every day, every customer who comes in, they’re like, ‘You’re still here?’ And I’m like, ’You’re still coming in like this?’”

The bantering back and forth with her customers and fellow employees makes the time pass quickly and makes the job a blast. 

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.