There is not a single venue more uniquely tied to Country Music than the Ryman Auditorium, and its intimate relationship with the Grand Ole Opry that was recorded there for decades on radio.

Those broadcasts helped inform music fans of the American music coming out of the segregated south, though written and performed by people of all walks and all backgrounds.

Country was and is a beautiful combo of folk, blues, and gospel. So it's no surprise that a church would be its spiritual center.

The Ryman's beginnings might sound like a Tall Tale or a myth, but it's all true. Way back in the late 1800s, a wealthy Nashville businessman named Capt. Thomas G. Ryman was making a fortune from his fleet of 35 riverboats, saloons, and gambling halls.

One day he heard Sam Jones, a popular preacher, was going to come to town and speak at a tent revival to rally against the sinful ways of the bustling town. So 44 year-old Ryman moseyed to the tent, which was overflowing with thousands of people listening to the charismatic man of God, and he immediately saw the light.

He was so moved, he declared he would build a proper venue for Reverend Jones to preach. A place more civilized and respectful than an enormous tent.

It took seven years and over $100,000 but in 1892, Jones was able to give his first sermon at the non-denominational Union Gospel Tabernacle, just a few blocks from where Ryman first heard him do his thing.

"This tabernacle is the best investment the city of Nashville ever made,” Ryman said.

Because it wasn't tied to a specific church, they were free to host religious services on some days and secular events on others.

When Ryman died 22 years later, Rev Jones suggested to the 5,000 mourners that Christmas Day the church should be renamed after the good captain. And ever since it has been known as the Ryman Auditorium.

As most stories go, this one gets better thanks to a woman.

Lula C. Naff was a bookkeeper at the agency that booked entertainment at the Ryman. Because the era was discriminatory to women, in order to hide her gender, she signed her letters L.C. Naff. It worked.

Tragedy struck in 1913 and the agency dissolved. Lula, now a widow, convinced the board of directors to allow her to rent to Ryman so she could lease the place out for her own events. Out were bills of magicians and puppeteers, in were big name talent.

“Who wanted to hear Billy Sunday when they could see Mary Pickford for a dime?” she once said.

“Lula essentially ran the building on her own for seven years (all of which were before women could vote in the U.S.) and, as a result of the success achieved, she was hired as the building’s GM,” Joshua Bronnenberg, museum curator stated on the venue's website.

She would run the place for 50 years, fighting for the right to show movies of all sorts, controversial plays, and showcase musical stars from all genres, but especially Country.

Today if you take a tour of the Ryman it will be guided by a woman dressed as Lula.

The Grand Ole Opry began as a radio show broadcasting the popular country acts of the day to a live audience. From 1925-1939 it moved around through three different locations before finding a true home at the Ryman.

About 14 years after its move there, a handsome teen with ice blue eyes named Elvis made his only appearance on the famous stage.

After he covered the bluegrass legend Bill Monroe in a rockabilly style, the owner of the singer's record label, Sun Records' Sam Phillips, was politely told the boy's act didn't really fit into what the Opry was all about. He accepted the notes and The King never returned. (Elvis Costello would perform there 19 times.)

Two years after the King was dissed, Sun Records label mate Johnny Cash made his debut at the Ryman where he played three songs beginning with "I Walk The Line."

Not only did it help launch the career of the Man in Black, but backstage that day he would meet June Carter, who years later would become his wife. They remained together until Johnny died. June passed just a few months later.

Cash's relationship with the Ryman was a rocky one. In 1965 he was in a mood, and while on stage he couldn't get the mic out of the mic stand so he broke some of the footlight bulbs with the bottom of the #!@% mic stand, which earned him a permanent ban.

"It showered the front row with hot glass," Bronnenberg told Gibson Guitars.

"I don't know how much they wanted me in the first place," Cash admitted, "but the night I broke all the stage lights with the microphone stand, they said they couldn't use me anymore. So I went out and used it as an excuse to really get wild and ended up in the hospital the third time I broke my nose."

The ban only lasted three years because over that time, he cleaned up, and recorded the iconic live album, At Folsom Prison, which was made from two performances for the inmates of the California clink.

Soon after he was invited back, he filmed each of the 58 episodes of his ABC TV show from what had become his favorite venue.

Fun fact: Bluegrass was made at the Ryman.

There's a plaque outside the beautiful auditorium that reads:

In December 1945, Grand Ole Opry star Bill Monroe and his mandolin brought to the Ryman Auditorium stage a band that created a new American musical form. With the banjo style of Earl Scruggs and the guitar of Lester Flatt, the new musical genre became known at "Bluegrass." Augmented by the fiddle of Chubby Wise and the bass of Howard Watts (also known as Cedric Rainwater), this ensemble became known as "The Original Bluegrass Band," which became the prototype for groups that followed.

And for all those reasons is why, before Post Malone played Stagecoach, and The Bluebird Cafe as he slowly entrenched himself into the country phase of his musical career, he first performed at the Ryman.

The same Ryman that was home to the golden years of the Grand Ole Opry before it moved to the Grand Ole Opry House on the other side of Nashville in 1974.

When the move happened, they cut a circle from the center stage at the Ryman and placed it in the Opry House.

You can see that circle where Posty is standing in while he made his Grand Ole Opry debut at the Opry House last week.

Yes it's from the Opry, but it's really from the Ryman.

This month the Ryman hosts the likes of Steve Earle, Joan Jett, Passenger and The Turtles among others. Get your tickets on the Ryman website.