Corey's Coming - Who Is Corey?

Who Is Corey?

Chapin never really explained in the song who Corey actually is or whether she is real or not. Chapin said the song was about "an old man with a dream and a young boy who buys it" in live version's introduction on Legends of the Lost and Found. Many listeners believe Corey is an imaginary character that only exists in the mind of John Joseph and his stories, which is why he states that reality is only a word. However, it could also be that Corey is real and the reason nobody knows of her is because she travels on the trains to the railroad yards to visit John Joseph. Another explanation is that Corey could be the angel of death "coming" to take the old man away, or that "Corey" was a joke the old man shared with the narrator, possibly derived from "C&O RailRoad".

Chapin did however explain where the name came from was from a fan he stayed with on the road that fed him when he was a struggling artist. As mentioned in his autobiography, Corey was the name of the woman of the couple.