views CB trigger doesn't work

I've spent freakin hours on this!
I'm trying to show a views block with multiple galleries (just one for now, though) where each one can be opened by a text link.
I've set up my content type and I can upload multiple images to each node of this content type.
In views for the configuration of the images field:
"Exclude from display" is checked
I set the images formatter to "colorbox"
content image style to "hide (do not display image)"
content image style for first image to "no special style"
colorbox image style to my image style I've setup (for size...)
Gallery is set to "per post gallery"
multiple field settings to "Display all values in the same row"

I've added another text field to contain the link of my colorbox trigger and excluded it from view
I added the colorbox trigger and selected trigger field as the link mentioned above; and in the popup I selected the replacement pattern of the images

The result is this:
I get the trigger link popping up the colorbox, but it is empty. If I examine the code in my web inspector, I see inside the div id="cboxLoadedContent" another div id="colorbox-inline-1472988593" and inside that there are 3 links with the href's showing a path, which, if I click the path, an image opens in a new tab. In other words, they are good links to the images I'd like to see, but they don't show in the colorbox.

More:
If I set the image config for "content image style for first image" to thumbnail, I get a thumb of the first image in the popup colorbox, and if I click that, I see my gallery. but that's not usable, I need the link to show the gallery straight off.

I've tried so many configuration options at this point, I'm about ready to try another popup. Any help greatlly appreciated.