Known since high school as “Jill Babe,” Jill Guillen has reached a unique milestone at Keeneland: She’s celebrating her 60^th consecutive race meet at the track. For most of that time, she has cooked for jockeys in the Jockeys Quarters (and now in the Limestone Café in the Sales Pavilion while Keeneland is undergoing a makeover). Throughout her tenure, Guillen’s cooking skills and hospitality have helped her make lasting friendships with the riders from all over the world who come here to compete.

A native Kentuckian, Guillen grew up in Clark and Powell counties east of Lexington. She found a love for cooking at a young age, learning skills from her grandmother, aunt and mother. “The first thing I ever learned to cook was a pancake,” she said.

When she started at Keeneland, Guillen was working in the kitchens for the public dining rooms at the race track before she transferred to the Jockeys Quarters, where a kitchen serves jockeys who are required to spend the entire race day here. She was initially nervous about the switch, she said, especially because she weighed nearly 500 pounds at the time. 

“I walked in that room so intimidated,” she said. “As someone working around people that weigh 100 pounds and you weigh almost 500, you get insecure.”

That feeling of insecurity quickly diminished as she waited on her first jockey, Shane Sellers, one of the most successful riders in Keeneland history.

“He walks up to me and he says, ‘Good morning, my baby. How are you doing?’ ”Guillen said. “They never made me feel like I was less than them.”

Guillen, who has lost a considerable amount of weight since then, soon developed a bond with the jockeys.

“They are full of life,” she said. “They made me feel like I was the only person in the world. They focused on me as a person. They saw inside me that I was someone wanting to just show love, and when they’re away from their families and their moms and dads, I was their track mama. I call them my babies because they made me feel protective of them.”

One of her “babies,” former jockey turned trainer Anthony Stephen, named a horse after her. The equine Jill Babe made her career debut at Keeneland in 2021 and has raced here three times.

“Even when the jockeys retire and go off, they always keep up with me,” she said. “It makes me feel like I still matter, and I’m their family.”

That feeling and more have kept Guillen returning to Keeneland.

“When you come in here, you feel like you’re at home,” she said. “I can never stop coming here. I've been here 30 years and 60 consecutive meets. I want to just come here forever; it puts life in your body. It’s part of me, and I know I’ll always feel that way.”

Watch interview with Jill Babe here.