Her husband Mallory is the farm manager at Gallagher’s Stud, one of New York’s oldest and most storied breeding and racing operations. Located in Ghent, New York and established in 1978, the farm has produced a host of graded stakes winners, including Allez Milord, a grade/group I winner in both England and the U.S.
; Rahy’s Appeal, winner of the Grade II Top Flight; and Straight Story, winner of the Grade III Fort Marcy Stakes. More recently, Gallagher’s Stud bred and raced the stakes winner Maximova. Jerome and Marlene Brody bought the land on which the farm sits in 1976, at first for a Black Angus breeding operation.
The Thoroughbreds followed two years later, and the Morts arrived in 1979. Karen said that she was a “horse-crazy” young girl, one who collected Breyer horse statues and who read "Black Beauty," the "Black Stallion" series, and the "Misty of Chicoteague" books. That was about as close as she got to horses until she met Mallory during her first, his second, year at Penn State University.
“We met on the soccer field,” she said, standing on the Saratoga backstretch watching the farm’s horses train. “He played, and I was the manager, because Penn State didn’t have a women’s team.” Nor had Karen’s high school in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, at least until she came along.
“The boys’ coach said, ‘If you can get enough people to sign up, you can have a team,’” Karen recalled. “We put up a sign-up sheet on the door, and we got n.