ST. CHARLES – The grand marshal for the 2013 St. Patrick’s Parade will be the woman responsible for starting the event, the Downtown St. Charles Partnership announced Monday.

Rosie Martinez approached the city about organizing a St. Patrick’s Parade in 1999, a year after Maurice McNally invited her to leave Dublin to open McNally’s Traditional Irish Pub in St. Charles.

“I wanted to bring a piece of my culture to St. Charles and show how we really do it back home,” Martinez said in a statement. “We wanted to bring a piece of Ireland to St. Charles.”