'More than a game': Kingsport friends build business teaching mahjong

KINGSPORT — Emilee Conkin and Haley Millsap are best friends with a common interest: sharing their love of mahjong with the Tri-Cities. As co-owners of Lucky Pair Mahjong, the two teach classes, lead open plays and even recently started up a mahjong league that meets at local businesses in Kingsport twice a month. Millsap said they started learning the game together last December and taught their first class in June 2026. "We got our husbands involved (in learning) and it brought them closer," Millsap said. "It brought us closer, and then all of our friends were always like, 'OK, I want to learn this game that you've been playing. So we would teach them, and then they fell in love with it." She said Lucky Pair Mahjong has now taught over 200 people how to play the American version of mahjong locally and has been the start of many new friendships. "It's crazy to see the relationships that have formed from it, like between other people and between us," she said. "We've met so many amazing people that we never would have talked to outside of this, just because we didn't have anything in common. Now we're always talking on social media, we've got people's numbers. We're wanting to hang out with them, so it's really cool." Outside of teaching mahjong, Millsap serves as an academic counselor for an online associate's program, and Conkin is a school counselor at West Ridge High School. What is mahjong? Conkin described mahjong as a tile-based recognition game involving matching and strategy. "The National Mah Jongg League card has a set of hands on here, different variations of hands that you can choose from," she said. "You are trading and discarding and drawing tiles the whole time with four people at your table, and the first person to win a hand from all the way from left to right on a single line of the different variations on this card wins." According to the National Mah Jongg League website, mahjong was introduced in the United States in 1920. The league started with 32 members and now includes more than 350,000 members. American mahjong differs from Chinese mahjong in several ways, according to the league website. These include: It uses a card of Standard Hands; these cards are changed annually. It uses more tiles, notably the Joker. The game is started with "Charleston," or the passing of three unwanted tiles from one player to another. It uses Jokers to complete quints and sextets in several combinations of hands. Both Conkin and Millsap think that social media has contributed to the recent rise in popularity for mahjong. According to the Yelp Trend Tracker, searches for "mahjong clubs" have gone up 4,467% and "mahjong lessons" is up 819%. "Seeing the tablescapes all over social media, tiles, racks and then watching videos of different women playing it, and they're like, 'What is this? I'm intrigued,'" Conkin explained. She said mahjong can be a great outlet for players to express themselves and make friends. "It's a lot about plugging into your creative side, but also your social side as well," Conkin shared. "I just feel like people crave relationships. Especially after COVID, I think probably this is where it has kind of just exploded." A look at some of the mahjong tiles provided by Lucky Pair Mahjong. ALLISON WINTERS/SIX RIVERS MEDIA Community connection Conkin said their passion has been for leading mahjong event Kingsport to give their own community something to do. She gave shoutouts to businesses like High Voltage, Inspire Wine Bar, The Sports Mill, Nick's Restaurant and Rivers of Love Coffee House which have opened their spaces up for mahjong events before. "We're just trying to reach the Tri-Cities as a whole, but also bring other people into the Tri-Cities and spread the love of mahjong," she said. "So whenever they go back home to whichever city they are in, they can share it with the people that they love there." Looking into the future, Conkin and Millsap agreed that a mahjong venue and playing space of their own would be perfect. A place to do events, classes, open plays — with tablescapes, mats, tiles and racks all available when you walk in. "For us, it's more than a game," she said. "We are so invested in teaching these people because this game is so good for your brain." To learn more about Lucky Pair Mahjong and their upcoming events, visit luckypairmahj.com.