Florence Hecht (left), 92, slid a $20 bill into the Wild Safari slot machine and pushed the button.

Daughter Barbara Hecht Havenick and four grandchildren -- including Jenny Bielawski, who wept – crowded around next to her.

Flashbulbs popped. It was a family photo they’ve wanted to take for decades, and it made history.

The first pari-mutuel slot facility in Miami-Dade County opened at 10 a.m. Thursday: Flagler Dog Track and Poker is now the Magic City Casino.

The casino put in 700 slot machines. Miami-Dade voters approved slots in 2008, and Flagler is the first pari-mutuel to add them. Calder Race Course will open early next year.

“I was so excited for today that I woke up every hour last night,” said Hecht, whose family pushed for casinos in the county since buying the dog track in 1954. (It opened in 1939.) “I guess everything good comes to those who wait.”

Havenick is the CEO. Her husband, Fred, pushed for slots for more than three decades before dying in 2006. Her three sons – Alex, Isadore and Michael – have worked in the dog track business and now will run the casino.

“You have no idea how long we have been anticipating this day,” Isadore said. One street bordering the casino is named after his father; the one intersecting it is named after his grandfather, Isadore Hecht – Florence Hecht’s husband, who died in 1977.

Alex Havenick picked out games popular with Hispanics, including 35 Diamond Lotto machines (played by Amada Colsa, far left). They were all full by 11 a.m. Thursday, and other patrons vultured over the players, waiting for an open machine.

He said he went incognito and quizzed Miccosukee Gaming customers, who are mostly Hispanic, four days a week for 18 months. In the 3-mile radius surrounding Magic City, 80 percent speak Spanish as their first language.

“And we have 300,000 people in that 3-mile radius around our casino,” Alex Havenick said. “So there is pent-up demand for gambling.”

The Miccosukees, located out Tamiami Trail, have an advantage because they pay no state tax, he said. Magic City’s advantage is being in the center of Miami-Dade and that it is a non-smoking casino, he said.

The casino had a “soft opening” Thursday – with very little advertising – yet more than 150 people lined up before the doors opened at 10 a.m. and employees scrambled to work out first-day bugs.

The grand opening is next month. Isadore Havenick said the family wanted to be open by Nov. 1 – grandma Hecht’s 93rd birthday – and to feel the family’s vibe for Flagler/Magic City, one needs to merely look at the name of the casino restaurant.

It’s Tres Hermanos – Spanish for “three brothers.”