A trip to get Christmas items turned into a mother and daughter into a winning duo during Ironton’s Small Business Saturday.

Morgan Madden and her daughter, Jaelyn Madden, came to downtown Ironton to visit the Ro-Na Theater, where Christmas on Vernon was being held because of cold weather.

“We were excited about Christmas on Vernon and we saw lots of traffic going into Unger’s and we decided to go in,” said Morgan Madden. Once they realized it was Small Business Saturday, they got a passport and visited a bunch of stores on the list to get the passport stamped so they could enter the drawing to win Ironton Bucks.

“We’d already been to a couple of places and gotten coffee and everything,” she said. “It was so busy downtown, Jaelyn had the idea to visit the businesses that weren’t downtown. We started there and then made our way back downtown, most of the places we hadn’t been to before so we made a day of it. We ate at the Iron Dinner.”

They stopped by about 15 stores and then brought their passports back to the Ro-Na and hoped for the best.

And the best is what they got. Morgan Madden won $100 in Ironton Bucks and Jaelyn Madden won $50 in Ironton Bucks.

Christy Phillips, chairperson for Ironton aLive, which organizes Small Business Saturday, said the drawing was completely random and she was “very surprised” that a mother and daughter won the prizes.

“We folded all the passports so they were the same shape and size and we shook them up in the box,” she explained. “I drew out the first prize. There were Ironton High School majorettes working at the Christmas on Vernon event, so I had one of them draw the second prize. When I looked at the names I said that they had to be related. Then I saw the phone number was the same, so I thought it was a mother/daughter situation and they are going to be very happy they played together.”

Phillips said that this is the first time a mother and daughter won the prizes. The closest they had to that is in 2022, when two sisters, Lynette Speaks, of Raceland, Kentucky, and Lori Miller, of Boyd County, Kentucky, won.

“It pays to play together,” Phillips said. 

Morgan Madden was surprised when she got the call from Phillips that she had won and then was a bit confused when she was asked if Jaelyn was with her.

“I called Jaelyn and she was excited to find out that I had won and then I told her she won second place. She couldn’t believe it,” Morgan Madden said.

And was Jaelyn jealous that her mom won the bigger prize?

“No,” she said.

“She probably knows that I’m going to spend mine on her anyway,” Morgan Madden said, with a laugh.

“Yeah, she’s going spend it on me and my sister,” Jaelyn Madden said.

Phillips said Small Business Saturday went really well and she enjoyed Christmas on Vernon being in the Ro-Na.

“It was like a little Christmas festival in there,” she said.