Certain places feel like time capsules. No matter how long it's been, the echoes of great times seem to be waiting for you. Rooms where friends bonded, celebrated victories, and, in general, made memories.
For many SIU alums, The Cellar is one of those places. Sitting just below street level in downtown Carbondale, the building has more than 50 years of history in the community, the last 25 of which have been under the ownership of alumni Paul and Michelle Stokes. They've not only maintained the beloved bar, but they've also carefully preserved the spirit that made it special in the first place.
Their story (like many good bar stories) began with an offhand comment at a party.
'I Bought My Favorite Bar'
Before becoming a bar owner, Paul Stokes spent two decades building a career with a family-owned Budweiser distributor in nearby Murphysboro. He worked his way up through the ranks to sales manager, but by the late 1990s, he felt he had reached a ceiling.
“I’d gone about as far as I could go,” Paul said. “And then I bought my favorite bar.”
At the time, the Cellar had already been owned for 25 years by Jack Price. One evening at a party, Paul made a casual remark about buying the place.
Michelle remembers it as an off-the-cuff comment.
But the idea stuck.
Soon afterward, Paul took a leap of faith that still makes him laugh today.
“I quit my job, started working for Jack, and learned the business,” he recalled. “We’d just had a baby, just bought a house, and bought this place. You talk about a scared 43-year-old!”
For a year, Paul worked under Price, learning every aspect of the business. Michelle also learned to run the books -- primarily payroll and licenses.
That year proved invaluable.
“The smartest thing I did was come to work here before owning it,” Paul says. “Getting my feet wet helped immensely.”
The early years of ownership were not without anxiety.
After the first year in business, a local banker, a family friend who had been watching their progress, reviewed the books and came away impressed.
“He liked what he saw,” Paul says. “He believed in our work ethic and helped us get the financing we needed to keep going.”
Michelle, meanwhile, was balancing the bar’s business operations while working as a speech therapist.
A native of St. Louis, she originally came to Southern Illinois to attend SIU.
“Being a bar owner was never part of my plan,” she says. “I came down here in ’92 to go to school. The plan was to get my education and leave.”
But as graduation approached, things changed.
“I fell in love with the area—and I fell in love with him.”
Michelle went on to earn her master’s degree in communication disorders and sciences while continuing to help manage the bar.
“Grad school was hard,” she says. “But we knew we had an uphill battle starting out. We were living on what I was making. The dream was there—we just didn’t know how much work it would take to get there.”
An undated photo of Paul and his father, Robert "Rip" Stokes, who was SIU's University Photographer for 32 years.
The Cellar's Bloody Mary mix is a favorite of many patrons.
Lessons from SIU
Both Paul and Michelle credit SIU with shaping their work ethic.
Paul’s connection to campus began long before he was a student. His parents both worked at SIU (his father was Robert "Rip" Stokes, the university photographer for more than three decades), and he grew up just a two-minute bike ride from campus.
“I was there all the time,” he said.
He started working at the Student Center in the kitchen during banquet events before moving on to selling Pepsi and popcorn at the SIU Arena.
“Hustling made you good money,” he says. “And it was fun.”
Back then, a $5 bonus for selling the most concession racks felt enormous.
Those early lessons in hard work—and the business training he received at SIU—proved invaluable later when he took over the Cellar.
“What SIU taught both of us,” Michelle says, “is that if you work hard, you can make things happen.”
A Place with Stories to Tell
Part of the Cellar’s charm lies in its colorful history.
Before it became its modern namesake, the building housed a liquor store and, even earlier, was part of a sequence of hotels serving travelers passing through Carbondale. Over time, it evolved through several identities, including The Peppermint Lounge and The Dugout.
The Peppermint Lounge era, Michelle notes with a smile, included cages for go-go dancers.
Urban legend even claims the bar hosted one of the region’s first male dance performances after a man lost a bet.
“The response from local women was positive enough that it became part of the entertainment for a while," Paul said. "But that's just the legend."
While those days are long gone, the building’s personality remains part of what makes the Cellar unique.
Walk into the Cellar today and it doesn’t feel drastically different from what alumni remember years ago.
That’s by design.
While Paul and Michelle have made improvements, including adding an outdoor patio and beer garden, as well as a new upper bar space, they have intentionally preserved the bar’s original character.
The result is something rare in a college town: a place that feels both timeless and welcoming.
Many of the regulars are SIU alumni who return year after year.
Homecoming weekend is especially meaningful.
“One of my favorite things is watching people walk through the door with their friends. They look around and take it all in. It’s the same feeling they had when they were here in the ’90s," Michell said.
That sense of continuity, stepping into a familiar place filled with shared memories, is part of what keeps people coming back.
“It brings back not just memories of the bar, but of their time at SIU," Paul said.
Looking Toward the Future
After 25 years of ownership, Paul and Michelle are beginning to think about retirement and selling the bar...
To the right person.
“A lot of people think when a bar is for sale, it means it’s not doing well,” Michelle said. “It’s actually the opposite. It’s doing very well; we just want to retire.”
But the future of The Cellar matters deeply to them.
“We’re not in a must-sell situation,” she added. “It would just be nice to retire.”
The owners agree that whoever takes over next must understand what makes the place special.
“We want someone who will love it and enjoy it for the next 25 years the way we have,” Michelle said. “We’re not going to sell it to just anyone.”
Paul agrees.
“Even when you’re not physically here, your heart is still here," he said.
As they'll both tell anyone, running a place like The Cellar isn’t just a job—it’s a way of life.
For thousands of SIU alumni, the Cellar is more than a bar.
It’s a memory, a reunion spot, a place where time slows down just long enough for old friends to pick up exactly where they left off.
And thanks to the Stokeses, that feeling has remained unchanged for 25 years...and counting.
