As Ginny Hensley, Patsy began performing in a variety of local and regional clubs and inns, and gained an audition for radio station WINC, then known as a “hillbilly” station, where she became a regular performer in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In 1948 she tried out in Nashville on WSM, the home of the Grand Ole Opry, at which she dreamed of playing. She was regarded as “too unpolished” then, but Roy Acuff heard her audition and asked her to sing on his own Noontime Neighbors radio show.