Big Nose Kate: The Love Of Doc Holliday’s Life
Public DomainBig Nose Kate is mostly remembered as Doc Holliday’s lover, but she has a Wild West story all her own.
No story about Doc Holliday is complete, however, without Big Nose Kate. Holliday’s lover, and the most significant romantic partner of his life, she forged her own path during the rowdy days of the Wild West.
Born Mária Izabella Magdolna Horony on November 9, 1849, in present-day Slovakia, Horony immigrated to the United States at a young age. Sadly, tragedy greeted Horony in America. Her parents died, and Horony was placed in the care of an abusive man. After she escaped, she tried to become a nun and then a wife and mother. Then, she allegedly lost both her husband and child to yellow fever (their existence has never been confirmed).
Alone in the Wild West, Big Nose Kate turned to prostitution. She worked in St. Louis, Missouri, before making her way to Dodge City, Kansas, and Fort Griffin, Texas. There, around 1877, she fatefully met Doc Holliday.
Public DomainBig Nose Kate after her Wild West outlaw days. Circa 1890.
The two hit it off. When Holliday got arrested in Fort Griffin during a card game, Big Nose Kate rose to the occasion by setting a fire to distract the townspeople, going to the hotel where Holliday was held, threatening his guards with pistols, and riding away with him to Dodge City on stolen horses.
Despite their attraction, their relationship was volatile. Though Holliday sought solace with Kate after the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (weeping, according to Texas Escapes, and telling her, “That was awful. Just awful.”), the two often had violent fights. Kate even helped implicate Holliday for murder when she was drunk, which largely ended their romance.
They briefly reconciled as Doc Holliday lay dying at the age of 36, but then, as she always had, Big Nose Kate went on to live her own life. Unlike many other Wild West outlaws, who died young, Kate eventually found honest work as a housekeeper. She died just five days before her 90th birthday.
