Mike & Dana Hoey

“Determined Distillers”

They met first as neighbors of work and habit rather than by a single cinematic moment: Mike Hoey, a man who had spent his life learning the angles and rhythms of construction on his father’s sites, and Dana Hoey, a woman who had built a career in business development and promotions. They found in each other a shared taste for making things with their hands and a willingness to turn good ideas into enterprises. Over time, that practical partnership widened into something more: a marriage, a family, and, eventually, serious talks about opening the first legal distillery in Oklahoma since Prohibition. Those conversations grew into sketches, and sketches into a business that the Hoeys quietly began building in 2015.

They chose the name Red Fork as an homage to local history. The Hoeys’ family roots reach back to Buffalo, Oklahoma, where a grain elevator still stands: a landscape of grain and prairie that felt right for spirits born of grain and patient work. They converted a former manufacturing building on Route 66 in southwest Tulsa, next door to the construction company that had supported their family for years, and in that adjacency lay their advantage: construction knowledge to fit the building to distilling, business savvy to manage permits and promotion, and a stubborn, small-town confidence that Tulsa would welcome a homegrown spirit.

The first years were a patchwork of learning. Mike and Dana bought a 250-gallon copper still, read technical manuals late into the night, and stood shoulder to shoulder while tanks were installed and ventilation was planned. They encountered the slow, patient bureaucracy of licensing and Oklahoma’s then-restrictive rules on on-site sales, the kind of problems that test resolve as reliably as a hot ferment tests a mash. They described the process as part obstinate curiosity, part methodical construction work, dovetailing around a shared stubbornness to see the dream become an actual bottle on a local store shelf.

When Red Fork’s shelves began to hold spirit, they carried more than alcohol; they carried the Hoeys’ genealogy. Labels featured artwork by a Tulsa artist, and recipes reflected an attention to Oklahoma’s land and history. The distillery would become notable not only for being the first licensed distillery in town since 1933, but for its sense of place: grain elevators, Red Fork’s oil-field past, and the couple’s ties to Buffalo and Tulsa threaded through the bottles and the stories they told in tasting rooms and interviews.