A club that started with two moms in Cary now runs a waiting list past forty

Not long ago, two mothers in Cary, North Carolina, were driving 45 minutes each way to learn American Mahjong. A year on, the club they started has a waiting list that regularly tops 40 people. That is the story Cary Magazine tells in its September 2026 issue, in a feature by Erin McKnight published on September 1.

The founders are Meredith Rooth and Kristin Kemp, who met through their children's school. According to the magazine, they noticed Mahjong gatherings online, booked lessons within a day, and took them with Monthly Mahj, a group in Fuquay-Varina. The long drive was the push. Rooth told the magazine she remembers thinking, "Cary doesn't have its own group, which is kind of crazy."

From a bar's library room to a waiting list

The Cary Mahjong Club played its first game on Tuesday, September 23, 2025, at Hearsay, a cocktail bar in downtown Cary's Matthews House, in a room the venue calls the library. The magazine reports that the club now fills up to ten tables at a time, that some of its periodic events have drawn 40 people at once, and that its waiting list regularly runs past 40.

The club does not keep to one address. The magazine names Home for Entertaining, South Line Brewing and Bond Brothers Beer Co. among the places it plays. Two formats run side by side: open play, where you sit wherever you like with whoever is free, at whatever level turns up, and guided play, which gives newer players hands-on coaching at the table.

The game is the American one. The magazine notes Mahjong's Chinese origins and that the American version was standardized by the National Mah Jongg League in 1937. The club's own link page puts it plainly, describing the group as an American Mah Jongg club in Cary, NC.

“Cary doesn't have its own group, which is kind of crazy.”Meredith Rooth, co-founder, to Cary Magazine

Capped, and still giving back

Growth has brought limits. According to the magazine, the founders have had to cap membership, and it reopens twice a year. When the waiting list runs long, they send people to sister clubs, among them the Apex Mahjong Club, which the magazine says was founded by former Cary players.

The club has also turned its tables toward the town. The magazine describes a school supply drive for Wake County Public Schools and a fundraiser called Tiles for Tomorrow, raising money toward a playground at a local elementary school. The founders told the magazine the club is not a business and that they have no plans to franchise it.

For anyone nearby who wants a seat, the magazine points readers to the club's social media handle, @carymahjongclub, for current information, and the club's link page carries an email registration form and its sign-ups. As of this writing, membership opens on that twice a year schedule, so the registration list is the surest way to hear when the next opening comes. Order of the Tile is not affiliated with the Cary Mahjong Club.

Prim's view

A waiting list is not a failure of supply. It is proof of the format. The people of Cary were not short of rooms; this club alone has played in a cocktail bar, two breweries and a shop. What they wanted was a standing invitation with a date on it, and someone willing to send it out.

I also admire the cap, which takes more nerve than saying yes. Say yes to everyone and you end up with a crowd in which nobody knows anybody's name. Capping the list, reopening it twice a year and sending the overflow next door to Apex is how a club stays a club. And the guided tables tell me the founders remember being the new players in the car, 45 minutes from home, wondering whether they would ever get the hang of it.

Two mothers looked at a long drive and decided their town deserved its own table. If your town has no group either, consider this your nudge.