"… and what do you do for a living, Mrs. Levi?" asks Ambrose Kemper in the first scene of this musical comedy. "Some people paint, some sew ... I meddle," replies Dolly and we there starts a whirlwind race round New York & Yonkers at the turn of the century following the adventures of that most mischievous matchmaker, Mrs. Dolly Gallagher Levi.

Hello, Dolly! is the story of Mrs. Levi's efforts to marry Horace Vandergelder, the well-known half-millionaire, so that she can send his money circulating like rainwater, as her late husband Ephraim Levi taught her. Along the way she succeeds in matching the young & beautiful Widow Molloy with Vandergelder's head clerk, Cornelius Hackl; Cornelius's assistant Barnaby Tucker with Mrs. Molloy's shop assistant, Minnie Fay; and the struggling artist Ambrose Kemper with Mr. Vandergelder's weeping niece, Ermengarde. Mrs. Levi tracks Vandergelder to his hay & feed store in Yonkers, then back to Mrs. Molloy's hat shop in New York, out into the streets of the city and the great 14th Street Association Parade, and then the most expensive restaurant in town, Harmonia Gardens, where Dolly is greeted by the staff in one of the most famous songs in American musical comedies.