Born Catherine Hanneford on February 16th, 1933, in Glenn Falls, New York, she was known to everyone as Kay Frances, after a movie star of the period. Like her two older brothers, she went to the same one room school along with the other young Hannefords. She started working in the family act when she was eleven - billed as the Worlds Youngest Bareback Rider. After the two boys finished their respective military service, when Kay was 14 years old, they all worked on a new family riding act. In conjunction with the horse act she also did a trampoline act with George Jr. - The Bouncing Kays - a rolla-bolla act with Tommy - The Martells - and presented her own solo act - Kay's Pets that included two Welsh ponies, six dogs, and a Congolese monkey.
      She was an extremely talented performer who was not afraid of anything. On one occasion she worked with a hanging perch act in which the finish trick featured Kay in an airplane spin held by a second performer hanging upside down. She was suspended by a six foot rope that goes around the back of her neck and spun in a horizontal position - an act she practiced only once before performing it.
     In 1950 she sustained a knee injury that temporarily grounded her but not for long. Unfortunately she started working too soon and she was forced to wear a bandage on her knee whenever she worked after that.
     The hardest thing for Kay to overcome was the overly protective family she was a member of. Both Tommy and George would make certain no unwanted suitors came around, and her father was exceptionally strict, partly through fatherly love and partly because he didn't want her to get married and leave the act. Today she most likely would have rebelled but young ladies didn't do that kind of thing in the fifties. Instead she became extremely introverted but she occasionally would sneak out with some guy she met - not usually with other performers but with men the family would hate - vendors, prop men, and grooms.
     She finally married a former prop man, Mike Kribs, in 1959. Naturally, when her family found out they were extremely upset, but they got over it and, when George Jr. left to start his own career with Vicki, he took over as straight rider in the family act. It couldn't last, however. Pressures were too great for Mike and he left in 1960. Kay refused to leave her family and so the two were divorced.
     Later that year she left the family act and joined George and Vicki for a year then returned. Her daughter, Nellie, was born in 1969. She met Jimmy Ille when Tommy formed his own circus - Jimmy was hired as bandmaster - and they married in 1972.
     Jimmy Ille was born in 1920 in Biwabik, Minnesota. His step father was a horn player and taught Jimmy to play at the age of six and a half. By the age of fourteen he was playing occasionally with some of the pro band in L.A. He joined the army in 1939 and spent six years with army concert bands. Then, in 1945, Merle Evans, famed leader of the Ringling Band, asked Jimmy to join his band and he played the Ringling show, eventually getting the "first" trumpet chair. He stayed till the mid fifties. Then he was hired to lead the band in Circus Circus casino in Las Vegas. In 1970 Jimmy returned to the Ringling show to take over from retiring Merle Evans, but left after one season. Then Tommy hired him to lead the band for the Royal Hanneford Circus.
     Kay and Jimmy left Tommy's show after two years. They worked for a time together but then Kay developed throat cancer in 1975. She died in 1976 and was buried near her father. Jimmy Ille died in 1999.