What Happened to O'Kelleys Irish Pub After Bar Rescue? (St. Louis, MO)

O'Kelleys Irish Pub operated near Busch Stadium in downtown St. Louis, marketed toward game-day crowds. In the episode "Land of the Beer and Home of the Misbehaved," Jon Taffer's team found a bar being undermined from within: the owner's nephew was shown behaving recklessly around customers and inventory, while an inexperienced manager was unable to rein in staff or maintain consistent service standards. The mismanagement had left the bar unable to capitalize on its prime location near the ballpark. The rescue team replaced the Irish-pub concept with a sports-bar format built around the stadium crowd, renaming the business Pastimes on 4th - A St. Louis Pub.

The new concept emphasized game-day promotions, a simplified bar menu, and revised staffing and accountability structures meant to address the family-management conflict at the center of the episode. Physical renovations updated the space with sports-bar signage and seating oriented toward televised games. Pastimes on 4th operated under that name for roughly a year after the episode aired. According to Gazette Review, the bar closed in July 2017 after the property was sold to new ownership that did not continue the Pastimes on 4th concept. A different bar, the Honky Tonk STL, occupied the same South 4th Street storefront by 2022, though it operates independently of the ownership group behind the original O'Kelleys or Pastimes on 4th.

A Yelp listing under the name O'Kelly at the same Fourth Street address, updated July 2026, is still marked closed, consistent with the 2017 closure reported at the time. The episode's on-air resolution focused on separating the nephew from day-to-day operations and installing clearer management authority, a fix that held for the period documented by outlets covering the bar afterward but did not prevent the ownership sale that ended the Pastimes on 4th concept about a year later. That assessment of the rescue's immediate impact belongs to the episode itself rather than to any independent accounting of the bar's later ownership change.