The Google Analytics examples I found online first all used GA, so I thought I needed to use GA as well.
ga('send', 'event', ACTION, CATEGORY, LABEL);
What was confusing is the fact ga() did not throw an errors, however no events were fired.
gtag('event', ACTION, {'event_category' : CATEGORY, 'event_label' : LABEL});
Once I moved to gtag('event') things showed up in the RealTime section of Google Analytics.
Hopefully this helps someone else!