Episode published: Friday 12/26/2025
Michael: Hi everyone, welcome to a brand-new season of Every Day is Groundhog Day (Except for the Days When It's Not), the only podcast devoted to the holiday, Groundhog Day. I'm your host, Michael, from countdowntogroundhogday.com. Hope you had a great Groundhog Day last year and are looking forward to an even better one this year. If you haven't listened to the podcast before, I'd recommend going back and checking out some, or all, of the episodes from our first two seasons. We've had a lot of great guests and spoken about a bunch of Groundhog Day forecasters like Sylvia, the Apex Armadillo, Woodstock Willie, and so many more. We've also spoken to actor Rich Sommer, who was born on Groundhog Day, and we ended last season with a two-part interview with the original writer of Groundhog Day, Danny Rubin, where he talked all about writing the film and the musical as well. For this season, we have a lot of great episodes planned. To kick it off, today we'll be speaking with restaurateur Grant DePorter. Back in 2024, he organized a reunion of the Groundhog Day cast in Chicago at the Harry Caray's on Navy Pier, which also served as a celebration of the director and co-writer of the film, Harold Ramis. As part of that event, a new prognosticator, a groundhog named Chicago Harry, was introduced to the world. We talk about all this and more, including the plans for this coming Groundhog Day celebration in the interview. Enjoy.
So, today I'm speaking with Grant DePorter, a restaurateur and the CEO of Harry Caray's Restaurant Group, which has a number of Harry Caray's restaurants in the Chicago area. For the past two Groundhog Days, Harry Caray's Tavern on Navy Pier has held a Groundhog Day and Harold Ramis celebration. Harold Ramis was, of course, the director of Groundhog Day. So, thanks for speaking with me today, Grant.
Grant DePorter: Thanks for having me.
Michael: So, before we get to the Groundhog Day, Harold Ramis stuff, could you give me a little bit of a background on yourself and Harry Caray's Restaurant Group?
Grant DePorter: Yeah. Well, Harry Caray's Italian Steakhouse opened in 1987, so we're getting close to 40 years now. It's an award-winning Italian steakhouse, serving great steaks, Italian food, and we have a great bar. Harry Caray was the announcer for the Chicago Cubs, and the Cardinals, and the White Sox. He's a Hall of Famer. He was known for saying, 'Holy cow!' and singing 'Take Me Out to the Ball Game.' And then, since 1987, we've opened multiple locations. In Chicago, we have our restaurant, Harry Caray's Tavern on Navy Pier. We also have the Chicago Sports Museum at Water Tower Place that also has Harry Caray's 7th Inning Stretch. We have a restaurant in Rosemont, Illinois, Harry Caray's there, and two restaurants in Lombard, Harry Caray's Italian Steakhouse and Holy Mackerel. And then we also have a restaurant at Midway Airport.
Michael: Great. So, Harry Caray passed away, I believe, in 1998, but before that, was he heavily involved with the restaurant? I think I read some articles where maybe he would go in and, like, serve beers and things like that?
Grant DePorter: If you're going to pick a celebrity to make a restaurant about, he's probably the perfect person because he loved to socialize and be with fans. He went to baseball games, and then his whole life was going to baseball games, or going to bars and hanging out with fans. He drank a lot! I mean, we ended up finding his drinking diaries years later. He thought he could write his drinks off of his taxes, so he would write every bar he was in and who he was with and how much he drank and all that, and I think we quantified that he had consumed 300,000 alcoholic drinks in his lifetime, and he would hang out with people like Ernie Banks to Wilt Chamberlain. You just never know who he was at the bars with. He was very close to Frank Sinatra, and one of his biggest fans was Elvis Presley. So, Harry spent some time at Graceland with Elvis, drinking and eating barbecued ribs until, like, three in the morning.
Michael: Oh, wow. I think you said that Harold Ramis was a partner in Harry Caray's as well.
Grant DePorter: Yeah. Well, I met Harold in 2004. In 2003, the Cubs were five outs away from going to the World Series for the first time since 1945. And then, there was that famous foul ball play where a fan deflects the ball, and the Cubs lose and don't go to the World Series. So, I ended up going crazy, paying $113,000 for the foul ball, just to destroy it, and I invited Cub fans to give me their ideas on how to get rid of the ball. I got 20,000 letters within one week with all their different ideas on how to destroy it. One was from Michael Lantieri, who won the Academy Award for Best Special Effects with the movie Jurassic Park. So, he gave me a studio in Hollywood, and we practiced destroying baseballs. For the destruction ceremony, I had Billy Corgan from Smashing Pumpkins to Rick Nielsen from Cheap Trick, but everyone said you should have a Ghostbuster there as your emcee to oversee it, and that's how I met Harold Ramis. He was the Master of Ceremonies of the ball destruction in 2004. So, when we opened up Harry Caray's Tavern at Navy Pier in 2010, we reached out and reconnected with Harold and asked if he wanted to be our partner, and of course, he did. And yeah, that's how I met him, and I was just a huge fan. I grew up watching his movies, starting with Animal House and Groundhog Day, and well, I mean, I grew up... Groundhog Day's a little bit later, but Ghostbusters, Caddyshack, and so on - Stripes. I was just such a huge fan of his. So, it was so fun to have him involved with us when he got involved. And then, he gave me for our displays, like, all of his scripts, including Groundhog Day and various things, later. Later on, I ended up getting the Armani coat that Bill Murray wore throughout the movie Groundhog Day because Harold had grabbed that. You know, I don't know if he was supposed to, but he grabbed it at the end of the movie and kept it. So, that was fun. And you know, when I'm opening up his various treasures, like, notes would fall out with different people. Like, here's the note to Chevy Chase, for instance, in Caddyshack. It's so fun. It's like hidden treasure, and you go looking through it. But you know, when Harold passed away, after 10 years, we thought, why not celebrate Harold's life and reunite the cast of Groundhog Day for the first time ever as a tribute to Harold? It was fun just connecting with the actors because they were very into this. They thought, 'What a fun idea.' We pretty much got everybody. And Erica Ramis, Harold's widow, she loved the idea. I mean, she quickly reached out to Brian Doyle-Murray because they're good friends, and ran the idea by him. He was in, and then it just kind of went from there. Once we had Brian- Because, you know, I wanted Buster Green. Having the mayor of Punxsutawney oversee the event, I felt like that legitimized it. And then, after getting him, we went from there.
Michael: So, I think I saw you had eight cast members that first year. You said Brian Doyle-Murray, Robin Duke (who played Doris), Ken Hudson Campbell (who was the man in hallway), Marita Geraghty (who was Nancy), Richard Henzel (who was the DJ), David Pasquesi (the psychiatrist), and then Peggy Roeder (who was a piano teacher). And then, I believe you also had Stephen Tobolowsky and Chris Elliott, maybe, sent messages. I don't think they were there that year.
Grant DePorter: Yeah, Stephen Tobolowsky was going to be there until three days before, and then he had a family emergency, so he sent a really incredible video. So did Chris Elliott. We also had some people in the movie that were not just main stars, like the drummer in the band when Bill Murray's playing, his name is Don Riozz McNichols, he was there. And then the guy that filmed our event was also the cameraman in the movie, name was Ari Golan. So yeah, everyone came together and made a real special day. People thought it was like, you know, some of these newscasters, they're, 'Oh my god! It was such an event!' I mean, it was almost feeling like they were at Woodstock, just seeing all of the energy there. I mean, because Bill Murray, when he was there, we didn't know how much... You know, because he didn't show up to dress rehearsal, let's say, he just showed up, and a lot of... tons of ad lib. And he was there for two hours. Originally, some people were wondering what interviews he would do. Tom Skilling, who was retiring from WGN, he was the iconic weatherman here. He's the most famous weatherman in Chicago, and he was retiring. Bill Murray was the weatherman, he's a weatherman, and Bill Murray also was Channel 9 in the movie. So, it just felt like they should get together. So, Tom Skilling shows up unannounced, and I whisper in Bill Murray's ear, 'Can you spend a moment with him after this?' And he just whispered back, 'I'm going to spend time with everybody!' And he did. I don't think anyone there didn't get to spend time with Bill Murray. We had, like, 20 people dressed in full Ghostbuster gear, and they brought, like, a Ghostbuster-mobile there, the Ectomobile, and Bill ran around with them. And then he jumped in the Ectomobile, trying to drive it down Navy Pier. So, that was just really special for a lot of people. Yeah, so everything just came together; it could not have been better. And weather here on that day, you know, it was close to 40 degrees, so the weather was kind, because it was an outside event last year and the year before. So luckily, you know, we didn't get hit with a blizzard. And Chicago Harry, our groundhog, I think, is two for two in predictions. You know, he said six more weeks of winter, and Chicago did have some massive snowstorms after the prediction. And last year, we said early spring, and I mean, this whole season was way warm in Chicago. So, I think the groundhog is two for two.
Michael: Wow. Okay. So, I guess I have some questions about getting Bill Murray. Famously, you hear these stories, he only has, like, a 1-800 number, he doesn't have an agent, manager, things like that. At least those are the stories. Apparently hard to get in touch with him. I've heard stories, I think a few different productions where it was like he agreed to be in movies, and then the people were like, 'Is he going to show up or not?' And then he does show up. So, was it difficult to get in touch with him? Did you have any concerns, like, was he going to show up? Because I saw some articles that were written before the event, and it was like 'Bill Murray might show up.' So, I don't know if that was being coy or if that was legitimately not sure if he's going to be there on the day.
Grant DePorter: Yeah. Well, we totally were not sure. He doesn't have an agent and manager and all that, so getting communication to him is a little trickier; we did it through his brothers. Brian Doyle-Murray, you know, kind of told him what we were doing. And then I'm friends with his brother, Joel Murray, and so I communicated through Joel, and then Joel would communicate to Bill. We stayed on his radar the whole time, and I never pushed for... I didn't want to be pushy, so I was just kind of giving him updates of who's coming and all that. And it was interesting in that Joel wrote me one time, it was like 11 o'clock at night or something, and said, 'Is Kenny coming? Is Kenny coming?' You know, Ken Hudson Campbell, he's the guy in the bed and breakfast that greets Bill Murray every morning. I did not contact Ken originally because he had cancer, cancer of the jaw. And it was right in December when I was contacting everyone, I didn't feel it was appropriate to reach out to Ken right when he was going into surgery for jaw cancer. I looked him up and, you know, he lost his insurance because of the SAG-AFTRA strike. So, they started a GoFundMe, and Steve Carell put up $10,000 very quickly to start the GoFundMe, and then people were contributing through that. So, writing back to Joel, I was like, 'I'm not sure I should be reaching out,' and he's like, 'You should reach out.' And it was pretty clear that Bill Murray wanted to know if Ken Hudson Campbell was coming to the reunion, like, he wanted everyone there. So, I reached out to Ken, and Joel made it, told Ken around me, like, 'Hey, Grant's going to reach out. You should engage with him and find out what's going on.' So then, Ken Hudson Campbell was coming, once I got him to say yeah- But one thing that he needed was like, 24-hour, well, not 24-hour, but a lot of nursing care because he did go through surgery. He looked great, but he needed, when he got here, a nurse. So, in the end, the Murray family paid for all the nursing. You know, they wanted him there, and they wanted to support him, and he had a great time. So, he came, and Joel made it clear that Bill was inquiring in all these different steps, and so I knew I was on his radar then. So, then it's like 24 hours in advance, and then Bill Murray's niece wanted to come. And I'm like, okay, that's more evidence that maybe he's coming. But we did not know until less than 24 hours in advance that he was going to come. He lived in Charleston, South Carolina. So, I was looking at flights from Charleston, South Carolina to Chicago the day of the event, because that would be the only way to do it. There were two flights, one at 6:00 a.m. and one at 2:00 p.m. And 2:00 p.m. wouldn't work because our event started at 3:00. So, it was like, it had to be 6:00 in the morning, meaning like, Bill Murray would have to get up at 3:00 in the morning to get to the airport, do whatever he had to do, and I didn't know if that was really gonna happen. And then we tried figuring out if he was on the airplane. We had no confirmation. We had a driver at O'Hare Airport that was supposed to pick him up, but he didn't communicate with us. So, we had no idea if Bill Murray showed up there. Then we heard rumors that he might be downtown, but we weren't sure. And the Sable Hotel at Navy Pier was being very helpful. They put up all the actors, they renamed themselves, you know, the Pennsylvania Hotel, just like the movie, and that whole thing. And we were trying to see, did Bill Murray check into that hotel? We didn't. Maybe he did. We saw a guy that looked like him. And I was like, I called Navy Pier security, and they have cameras everywhere, and they said, We're not sure if he's here. I actually called the 18th District Police Station to see if the police could put out, like, an APB on Bill Murray. Has anyone seen him? Because they knew his regular spots when he's in Chicago, where he might be. But the police couldn't find him. The police commander showed up at our event with the sergeants. Everyone's looking for Bill Murray, and we're all supposed to meet at 2:00 for, like, check-in, go over the run of show. And all the other actors were there, but Bill was not there. So, we're like, 'Is he coming up?' And we asked Brian Doyle Murray, 'Is he coming?' And Brian hadn't heard from him either. So, we didn't know. And then it's almost 3:00 o'clock, it's probably 2:58, Bill Murray walks in the door, and he's got a Ben and Jerry's ice cream cone in his hand. And everyone screams, and then the ice cream falls out of his thing and lands on Bill's front, but he doesn't care. You know, he's wearing some, you know, like a Bear's hat, and he's just kind of having fun. So, he didn't get to see the script; he didn't get to see anything. He just went out there, and he went for it. Brian Doyle-Murray had a script that he was supposed to say as Buster Green. And then he quickly passed it off to Bill Murray and said, 'Do you want this, Billy?' And he just went. Because Bill was all in once he was there, thousand percent in on everything. So, he ad-libbed, he kind of did a little bit of Buster Green's script and a little bit of his own thing. You know, and then Bill jumped into giving the weather forecast, saying, 'Harold is helping with the great weather,' and just having fun with it.
[clip of Bill Murray speaking at the event]
Grant DePorter: So, it all played out. And then, I mean, because Bill walked from the hotel, which is at the other end of the pier, and the pier is almost a mile long, so Bill walked the entire length of the pier with no security, no nothing. And then afterwards, he just, like, jumped into the pit of people, all the fans, and just kind of was embracing everybody. And then, about two hours later, he disappeared as, you know, mysteriously as he entered, like no one... 'Where did Bill Murray go?' 'Oh, we don't know.' No one knew, and that was it. Later on, he ended up on the news in New York City. So, all of a sudden, he went from us to somewhere else very quickly. But he spent some good time with Erica Ramis and gave her a hug and kiss. And, you know, everyone just felt very emotional. It was a great tribute to Harold. It could not have gone any better. Bill loved the statue. There's a statue we had of Harold Ramis that was in the 2016 version of Ghostbusters because they had cameos from all the original Ghostbusters, but Harold couldn't be there, of course, so they created a statue that was in the movie that Erica had. We put it up on stage, and Bill loved it. He was just like hugging the statue, said, 'This is incredible.' So, the statue, ever since, has been living in my office just to come out once a year on Groundhog Day because the city of Chicago declared it Harold Ramis Day that would repeat, repeat, repeat forever on February 2nd going forward, and the statue is a great way of having Harold be present on stage for the event.
Michael: Yeah, I remember that statue from the movie, and I did see that you had it there. So, you said that that only comes out during this ceremony, then. But you said you also have some other, like, memorabilia. Is that, like, a permanent in the restaurant that people can come and see?
Grant DePorter: Yeah, so I have some great displays there, you know, under glass, like, full-size mannequin of the Armani coat that Bill Murray wore in the movie. I have a cabinet of all of Harold's scripts with Groundhog Day prominently right in front, along with some other things that Harold had, like his personal mini marshmallow man from Ghostbusters, some other things. Then, I also have Harold Ramis' Egon Spengler jumpsuit from Ghostbusters. And then, I ended up getting at auction Bill Murray's Ghostbusters 2 jumpsuit to put along with Harold. So, you have Peter Venkman's jumpsuit with Egon Spengler and put them together. When I first got Bill Murray's Ghostbuster jumpsuit, it was at a London auction, and it came over, and I ended up getting it. And then Joel Murray came in to see it and then put on Twitter, 'Hey, Bill, you left your dry cleaning at Harry Caray's.' You know, so it was fun. But we have that and, you know, we have other things. I even had, at one point, a groundhog that was Harold's inspiration. It was like a three-foot, very heavy sculpture of a groundhog, but it had peeling paint on it and other things. Supposedly, it was in the movie somewhere, but I could never locate it after watching the movie a hundred times, but Erica said it's there somewhere. It was Harold's inspiration, and it would stare at him as he was going over the scripts and stuff.
Michael: Oh, wow.
Grant DePorter: Harold worked on the scripts, too. You know, you said he directed it, but he also co-wrote it. The original script was a little bit darker, and Harold wanted to be more of a fun comedy, so he adjusted a lot of the script. The original script was a little bit darker.
Michael: Okay, yeah. I talked to Danny Rubin last year, who wrote the original script, and he did he did mention that there was a lot of, you know, he worked on it, and then I think Bill Murray also worked on the script a little bit with Danny, and then Danny also worked on it with Harold Ramis, and then Harold Ramis took a pass. So, there was a whole bunch of different versions of that script. You did mention Joel Murray. Joel Murray was on Mad Men, right? He was Freddie Rumsen. I spoke to Rich Sommer, who played Harry Crane on Mad Men last year, and he had a lot of nice things to say about Joel Murray.
Grant DePorter: Joel Murray is amazing, and he's a huge Cub fan. I mean, so is... Bill Murray is one of the biggest Cub fans there is. And it's kind of funny that in 2016, I predicted in advance the Cubs would win the World Series because of the magic number 108; there's 108 stitches in a baseball that was created by Spalding, the Cubs' first pitcher and manager. And I started noticing the number 108 everywhere I looked, you know, 108 meters to the foul poles at Wrigley Field. The movie Back to the Future 2, where the Cubs win the World Series, was 108 minutes long. So, I just kind of listed all those. And Bill Murray had a lot of 108s tied to him. The pothole that Bill Murray steps into in Groundhog Day has a brass plaque, you know, 'Bill Murray stepped here,' it's like a historic plaque, and that's at 108 East Cass Street in Woodstock, Illinois. And I bet there was not just that one 108 with Bill Murray, there was plenty. There was plenty. And Joel kept on coming in saying, 'Where is my 108? Where is my 108?' You know, because I went to game one of the playoffs and videotaped in advance of this play, I said, 'Javy Báez will hit the home run on pitch number 108,' and I'm sitting in the front row in the visitors' dugout. And I said, 'Here it comes!' and then, boom, he knocks it out. And the Cubs win one to zero. I made national news at that point, that was known as, like, the prophet of 108, and everything kept on coming as 108s. The most pitches by a Cub during the playoffs, 108. The grand slam ball during the World Series went 108 miles an hour. Joe Maddon lifted the trophy in Cleveland, Ohio, at 1:08 a.m. Joe Maddon gave me his shirt that he was wearing in the rally, which he raised the trophy there at 1:08 p.m., and he said, 'I'm spiritual,' and all this stuff. But I called Joel Murray after I did figure out a 108; his birthday in 2016 was on the 108th day of the year.
Michael: Oh, wow.
Grant DePorter: Because Joel Murray came in to Harry Caray's to watch the game with all kinds of former, like, SNL people and stuff, like, every away game. So, if they were home, Joel was there. If they were away, he was here. And Joel would take, like, the whole court. He would have a giant table and kind of lead the room. So, that was very fun, and he's a special guy, for sure.
Michael: Could we talk about Chicago Harry? How did that come about? Obtaining the groundhog, coming up with the name. So, is it Chicago Harry because of Harry Caray, or is it Harold Ramis? I don't know if people called him Harry. Is it both?
Grant DePorter: Yeah, it had double meaning: Harold Ramis and Harry Caray. I mean, because Harry was named Harold, too. So, it's just it had double meaning for sure. And people liked it.
[clip of Chicago Harry's prognostication ceremony]
Grant DePorter: I mean, it was hard finding a groundhog. Try finding a groundhog; it's not that easy. And, you know, they're a little hard to control. You don't know which way they're going to go when you take them out of a tree stump, but it worked out perfectly. And I found the right guy. I did call lots of places. It's timing too, like, someone might have had a groundhog, and they don't have any more, but they said, 'We got goats,' and I said, well, a goat won't work for the event. And just also getting a tree stump is tricky. And, you know, we looked at places in Pennsylvania, and real tree stumps are very heavy. Found some made out of concrete, very heavy again. I ended up going with, like, a movie-quality tree stump created by a guy named Charlie Hall that works on, like, Chicago Fire, Chicago P.D. He's a local guy that works on Chicago films. He created one that looked great. I gave him, you know, what the ones look like in the movie, showed him what they have in Punxsutawney, just 'Let's do something like this,' and he created it. We're able to move it around. I didn't need a forklift like some of these other ones.
Michael: Oh, wow. It looks very similar to what they have in Punxsutawney. So, how far in advance did you start planning this? I know you said it was the 10th anniversary of Harold Ramis' passing when the first event happened. So, was it months? Was it years? Obviously, pulling together all these people must have taken some time, and getting the groundhog stump must have taken some time, too.
Grant DePorter: I mean, I focused on the movie forever because I love the movie and think about things. You know, I reread Harold's script because the script had a lot of rewrites in there; things would change throughout. So, I have the before and after versions of just different things, and I love that kind of behind-the-scenes, like, this is where it used to say, and this is how maybe someone ad-libbed in the movie, and it kind of stuck. So, by having the movie, having Harold's memorabilia tied to the movie, it's hard to say when it all started coming together because it was little by little over time. Originally, when Harold passed away, we did, like, a Groundhog Day celebration when you could come into Harry Caray's, get whatever - a burger, salad, steak, whatever - then, if you came in the next day, it was all free. But you had to, like, wear the same clothes, everything had to be exactly as it was the day before, and people had fun with that. So, we just did some groundhog, like smaller celebrations. And then, when the 10-year mark was coming, I thought about how do we celebrate Harold? And I ran the idea by Harold's assistant, Pam Kasper. Pam is just... I call her a force of nature. I've worked with her before, and I knew her and ran this stuff by her, and she liked the idea. Ran it by Erica Ramis, and she loved the idea too. So, it was kind of like, all the stars aligned. Harold's passing was in February, and Groundhog Day is in February; it felt like that would be a good time to do this celebration of his life. So, it all kind of worked fast. Once it started coming together, I mean, all the actors, I think Brian Doyle-Murray wasn't contacted until November, before February 2nd. So, it went 'bah-bah-bah-bah-boom.' It wasn't like these actors were all signed up a year in advance; it was like they all came together within about a month.
Michael: Okay, wow. So, that was the first year. And then you had another celebration this past year. And this time, Stephen Tobolowsky was there in person, and he took over the role of the president of the Groundhog Society, or whatever. So, that was great to see. And you had a few of the other actors come back, I believe. The piano teacher and one of the DJs.
Grant DePorter: Peggy Roeder, yeah, and Richard Henzel again. But since Stephen missed out on the year before, even though he really wanted to be there, he was great. He took the lead this last year and could not have been any better, could not have been any nicer. They also do a Groundhog Day celebration in Woodstock every year, so I think Stephen was at both places that day. It worked great because their celebration is in the morning, but we do it around 3:00 in the afternoon, so it worked out well. My dad used to live near Woodstock, so I'd been there many times. They've done a celebration every year, like, since 1993 or something like that. For us, you know, we did the first reunion. We're trying to make it a little bit more about Harold. So, this year, we're going to involve the movie Animal House mixed in, like a multiverse type of thing, where you have Groundhog Day meets Animal House, because Harold's first movie that he worked on was Animal House. So, we have Tim Matheson, who played Otter in Animal House, along with Mark Metcalf, who is Neidermeyer, and they'll be there. We'll probably have Peggy, the piano teacher, back with Richard Henzel again, because Richard's great with his voice to kind of kick it off. We have the clock turn to 6:00 a.m., and then right when that happens, Richard kicks it off with his big voice, and we go from there. So, we'll have the groundhog back again, we'll have the tree stump. Navy Pier is just tremendous, like, they have a giant Ferris wheel, and they put the groundhog in the middle of the Ferris wheel. The Sable Hotel will transform again into the Pennsylvania Hotel. And then restaurants, like, we do food from the Tip Top Cafe from the movie, and a lot of restaurants there do, too. So, it's like a pier-wide type of event, and getting people to show up in February in Chicago is always going to be tricky, but we always get a lot of people. So, people love it, and it's a nice holiday in Chicago in February. Like, who would have thought that that is something you could do?
Michael: Yeah, that's one of the great things about the holiday is it's in the middle of winter when, normally, you don't want to be going outside or really doing anything. So, it gives a little bit of a reason to celebrate and have some fun. You know, I'm in New Jersey, so it's pretty cold here, too. Maybe not as cold.
Grant DePorter: Not as cold as Chicago. My sister lives in New Jersey. I'm going to have to say you have it nice. You're like Hawaii compared to Chicago.
Michael: [laughs] So, I'm glad to hear that you're continuing the tradition, at least for this year. Do you plan on, you know, this just being a perpetual thing, at least for...
Grant DePorter: Yeah.
Michael: All right, that's good to hear.
Grant DePorter: Yeah, I mean, well, like I said, it's like, repeat, repeat, repeat, right? Every year. And I store the tree stump every, you know, it's in my basement, I've got Harold's statue in my office. We've gone all in on this, so you know, as long as we can keep finding a groundhog, and Harold's got tons of movies to kind of mix in year after year, after year. At some point, we'll do Ghostbusters and so on mixed in with Groundhog Day, just to kind of keep it fresh and keep that annual tribute to Harold. I've become very close to Harold's assistant, like I said, Pam. She's always brainstorming, too. She loves this stuff, and so she's like my co-producer on the event. She just brainstorm, brainstorm, brainstorm. How can we just keep growing this, make it special, and make it like a holiday, like I said, celebrating Harold?
Michael: That's great. Yeah, and opening up to other Harold Ramis projects definitely is going to give you a lot of material. There's, as you said, Ghostbusters. He worked on a bunch of episodes of The Office, too, I believe, directing them. So, you know, you could do some Office stuff. He was in Knocked Up, right?
Grant DePorter: Yeah, he was in different things throughout. I mean, Diane Keaton just passed away; he was in Baby Boom, too. It's just like, I mean, those are farther reaches than his core work. But yeah, The Office would be fun, I mean, we're friendly with some of the actors from that series. But we're also looking at people getting older, and we want to... Like, Animal House was created in 1978, so it's not like you're going to say, 'Oh, we'll do that 10 years from now.' We're doing it this February.
Michael: So, I did see, for that first year, there was a letter of tribute from President Obama that his widow, Erica Mann Ramis, read.
Grant DePorter: Yeah.
Michael: Okay. How did that come about?
Grant DePorter: I mean, it had nothing to do with me, that's for sure. Harold was very close to U.S. Senator Dick Durbin. They were born the same day. It wasn't just sharing a birthday, I mean, it was the exact day they were born, and they would talk, like, frequently on their birthdays. So, Dick Durbin showed up at the event, and I don't know if he... I can't remember the story behind it, because Harold knew a lot of people, you know? And he had a connection with President Obama. I don't know how that came to be. But, you know, Pam Kasper, like I said, can make magic happen all over the place. So, it probably came indirectly through a Pam move.
[clip of President Obama's letter being read]
Grant DePorter: Like, you just never know who Harold touched. The Dalai Lama was supposed to be at Harry Caray's in 2017, and Erica goes, 'Oh, well, you know...' because there's that whole line from Caddyshack, where Bill Murray talks about the Dalai Lama. But Erica said that Harold and Erica met the Dalai Lama, and the Dalai Lama knew that whole line. That was kind of funny. Yeah, in the end, he ended up getting a cold and couldn't come to the United States, so it didn't happen. But he touched a lot of people in a lot of different ways.
Michael: That's great. So, I don't know that I have all that much more. Is there anything else about the Harold Ramis or Groundhog Day celebrations that you wanted to mention?
Grant DePorter: Well, just come to Harry Caray's Tavern, Navy Pier, on February 2nd. I would get there before 3 o'clock, but it's going to start sharply at 3:00, and we're just going to go all in on the movie Groundhog Day, but this time mixed in with Animal House. So, people should probably re-watch Animal House before they get there, just so they can pick up on the references. But we're going to have some fun for sure.
Michael: Something else that Harry Caray's does is host a Toast to Harry Caray. It looks like last year was the 27th annual event. Could you talk a little bit about that?
Grant DePorter: The worldwide Toast to Harry Caray is once a year, it will be March 25th in 2026, the day before opening day, like kickoff the next season. We've had bars and restaurants in 120 countries around the world, we've had over 5 million people toast Harry. I've set a Guinness World Record before during this event, and I blew up the baseball in 2004, that was on the Worldwide Toast to Harry. That one was broadcast to the world. CNN International, BBC broadcast to Asia and Europe. And today's show flew into Chicago just because I refused to go to New York. Katie Couric and Lester Holt came to Chicago because they wanted to announce to the world how I was blowing up the ball. Mythbusters did something on us; we were on Jimmy Kimmel, David Letterman. So, that was an interesting moment in my life for sure. I just needed everything to go perfectly. I didn't wanna lose the ball. I had security with me with the ball, like, 24/7, leading up to the event. So, those are... I mean, so yeah, the Toast to Harry. Next year will be the 28th worldwide toast.
Michael: Okay, wow. And I think I saw something... Do you have the remains of the ball and, like, the machine that blew it up? Is that at one of the locations, or is it at the Chicago Sports Museum?
Grant DePorter: Well, the remains, when you blow up a baseball, you have a lot of pieces. So, I have pieces of the ball at all the restaurants just on display. The vessel we used to blow it up is actually behind me in my office. It's a plexiglass bulletproof container, because they used the explosive called PETN that was invented in World War I. We wanted to blow up the ball, but we wanted pieces left over to ward off future curses against the Cubs. So, we had used pressure, electricity, and explosives. And I have... Well, the towers, we had, like, brass towers; those are on display at the Chicago Sports Museum. And a replica of the vessel is there; the original chamber is behind me. The year after that, we turned part of the remains of the ball into spaghetti sauce, so 700 Cub fans came in to eat it. I had scientists make sure it was safe, but it looked like a still, like, you know, we were making moonshine because all the stuff comes out. In science, alcohol is going to come out before anything else, and that's what we used in the sauce. So, we have some fun, you know? Every year is trying to make it special. One year, we had Jim Cornelison, the Blackhawks and Bears national anthem singer, sing 'Take Me Out to the Ball Game' as a tribute to Harry, but when he hit the high note in that song, all the glasses in the venue exploded. You know, everyone thought that was real, and we did tell the world later how it happened because it was the same guy that blew up the ball, the guy that won the Academy Award for Jurassic Park. He flew out from Hollywood and put hidden squibs on all the glasses. Which, you know, in Hollywood stuff, that's when you shoot someone, blood shoots out, it's a squib. So, he hits a hidden button, all the glasses explode, and everyone thinks Jim's voice can just blow up everything.
Michael: Great. I did see something about you living in a hotel for, like... growing up. What was that like?
Grant DePorter: Yeah, so my dad ran all the Hyatt hotels in the Midwest, and I lived at the Hyatt Regency Chicago, the largest Hyatt hotel in the world. I lived there for 14 years, and I had a lot of fun. I mean, my parents were divorced; my dad was always traveling, my sister was at boarding school, so I was by myself. And my dad basically said, 'Here's the hotel. No rules apply, just whatever you want.' So, I got room service three times a day, every day, for 14 years, had great parties, and a lot of fun.
Michael: That's a movie.
Grant DePorter: Yeah. I could help myself to keys. I had friends over, and I took the Monarch Suite one time, the biggest suite up there. No one knew I took it, but I just grabbed the keys. And the next morning, we're watching the movie Dressed to Kill, starring Michael Caine, and there's a very, you know, action part where I was really focused. Then people knock on the door, and on the door, they're all wearing sunglasses and had earpieces in, and I'm berating them, saying, 'You're interrupting the best part of the movie! What's going on?' And they said, 'Oh, sorry, we didn't know the room was occupied.' So, they went back downstairs. Well, that was security for Henry Kissinger, and I had kept him waiting in the lobby for another hour so I could finish the movie. [laughs]
Michael: Oh, wow. So, have you written a book or considered writing a book? It sounds like you have a lot of unique experiences.
Grant DePorter: Yeah, I didn't write a book about it. I did write a book, it was called Hoodoo: Unraveling the 100-Year-Old Mystery of the Chicago Cubs. It was a book about the Cubs and, you know, ending curses and all that kind of stuff, but not about growing up in a hotel. I mean, I definitely have a lot of stories from that, but I don't think I should tell those stories.
Michael: Okay. So, we've got Groundhog Day celebration number three coming up, February 2nd, 2026. You have the 28th Toast to Harry Caray coming up in March. What day?
Grant DePorter: March 25th.
Michael: March 25th. Anything else you want to plug? Mention? Just come to any of the Harry Caray locations?
Grant DePorter: Come to Harry Caray's. Just go to harrycarays.com, and you'll see. I mean, also, if you like Chicago mob history, our original building was owned by Frank Nitti, Capone's enforcer, and he ran the Chicago Mob when Al Capone went to jail. I mean, this building was used by Al Capone's liquor distributor first, and we found hidden rooms in the basement and hidden tunnels. Address book fell out of the wall one time with mobster home phone numbers in it. So, the Thrillist called my basement the number one hidden gem in America that you had to see, just because we put a mini museum down there of our findings. So, that's interesting. And Chicago Sports Museum, like, I have Michael Jordan's hoop from The Last Dance's final shot. Mike Ditka's playbook from the Super Bowl, just different, like Chicago, but we also have interactives there where you can become like Patrick Kane from the Blackhawks, now Detroit. We filmed all these guys in green screen rooms, and you can either become them or compete against them. Like Richard Dent, who was the MVP of the Bears' Super Bowl, he's one of our partners, and you're a quarterback, and you're trying to avoid him sacking you. So, we have interactives like that at our sports museum as well.
Michael: Sounds great. And hopefully I can make it out to one of these events some year. I definitely want to get out to Woodstock, too. So, maybe Woodstock in the morning and Chicago Harry in the afternoon. How far is Woodstock? Is it, like, an hour and a half or something? Two hours from...?
Grant DePorter: Well, it depends on traffic. I would say an hour and 45 just to be safe, from downtown back and forth. I mean, Woodstock looks just like the movie. I mean, it's just very quaint, and it's fun to see the buildings that match up with what you see. If you watch Groundhog Day and then you go there, you feel like you're in the movie.
Michael: Well, thank you so much for talking with me today. If there's nothing else on your end, I appreciate all the time you took with me.
Grant DePorter: Well, thanks for having me on.
Michael: Thank you.
And that's the interview. Thanks to Grant DePorter for speaking with me for today's episode. If you're in the Chicago area and want to check out Harry Caray's Harold Ramis and Groundhog Day celebration, make sure you're at Navy Pier by 3:00 p.m. on Groundhog Day. Music for the show was written by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. Show artwork is by Tom Mike Hill. Transcripts are provided by Aveline Malek. If you want to learn more about Groundhog Day, visit countdowntogroundhogday.com. Any feedback or voice messages about the show can be sent to podcast@countdowntogroundhogday.com. Talk to you next time!
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Transcribed by Aveline Malek.