Phil Robertson, star of the television reality series Duck Dynasty, was born April 24, 1946 in Vivian, Louisiana, USA. Brought up in a poor family of two sisters (Judith and Janice) and four brothers (James, Harold, Thomas, and Silas), his lodgings were squalid, lacking electricity, running water, and bathroom facilities. Food was obtained from fruits and vegetables in the garden, pigs, poultry, fishing, and hunting deer, squirrels, and other game.
Phil said to Parade Magazine in August of 2013, “We were so poor as kids. I didn’t even see a bathtub, running water, hot water, commode–we didn’t have any of that. We started with a humble log house, milk cow, garden-raised our own food, killed a hog every year in the fall, and had the meat hanging up in the smokehouse—that was our childhood, me and ol’ Si. If you had pulled in there in the 1950s, you would’ve said it was the 1850s. It looked like we were living 100 years before.”
In high school, he was part of the baseball, track and football teams which gained him a scholarship on the Louisiana Tech University Bulldogs football team. Terry Bradshaw, an NFL hall of famer who had played football with Robertson on the Bulldogs, says in his autobiography, It’s Only a Game, “He’d come to practice directly from the woods, squirrel tails hanging out of his pockets, duck feathers on his clothes. Clearly he was a fine shot, so no one complained too much.” Phil, proud of his hunting skills, says it wasn’t just feathers and tails, but guts and other things. He played quarterback for two seasons from 1966 to 1967 for the Bulldogs but quit in 1968 so he could spend more time in the woods hunting ducks. Later when he was approached about playing for the Washington Redskins, Phil refused saying that he was simply playing football for the scholarship and that it got in the way of duck hunting.
He achieved a bachelor’s degree in physical education and a master in education with an emphasis on English. Phil said in an interview with Holly Anderson of Sports Illustrated’s Campus Union, “I went back and got my master’s just in case. I thought, if I ever needed it, I’d have the sheepskin to show people no matter how dumb I looked, actually I was about half intelligent. I got the degree to let ‘em know I wasn’t as dumb as I acted.” He taught school for several years and his students spoke highly of his abilities. He quit teaching after he made a decision that his talents and time could be better spent hunting in the woods.
In 1966, Phil married Marsha Kay(Miss Kay) Carroway and began to raise a family. Apparently, life did not turn out as planned and his marriage began to fall apart. His idea to operate a bar backfired, when he became a hopeless alcoholic, so much that he would constantly get angry and throw his wife and kids out of their home. Miss Kay claims that the only thing that kept her in the marriage at this point were the words from her grandmother, “One man, one wife, for one life”.
Crime became his passion and hiding out from authorities in the woods for days on end was second nature to him. Sometime in 1975, his sister Jan, together with a Christian friend, visited the bar to preach the gospel and give the patrons Bible handouts. Phil threw Jan’s friend out of the bar and told his sister she was allowed to stay, but not to upset the patrons.
Phil Robertson, now 28, had undergone a series of distressing difficulties and separation from his family. One day, he decided he would speak to Jan’s Christian friend. Together, they had an in-depth discussion of his life, the offer of forgiveness by Jesus and Heaven’s promise. Phil repented and was baptized in the presence of his wife and kids.
His wife Kay once said to her kids that, “Your dad thought he was searching for freedom, but the devil is in him now. Your dad is created by God. He is a good man with a kind heart, but now Satan is inside him. Love your dad, hate Satan and the powers upon him.” She had a personal mantra that kept her going, “one man, one woman for one life”.
Robertson, an avid professional hunter with know it all skills in duck hunting was unhappy with the quality of duck calls, so he decided to create his own. Phil invented the first Duck Commander duck call in 1972 and patented it in 1973. Today, the Duck Commander is multi-million dollar business.
On the Duck Dynasty TV show, Robertson is portrayed as the wise patriarch of the clan. He has maintained his rugged outdoor ways and shuns modern culture. He prefers to spend quality time hunting on his 800 acres in Monroe, Louisiana or cooking with his wife Kay. He is rarely seen in the Duck Commander office.
Phil is a still a devout Christian and an elder at the White’s Ferry Church of Christ in West Monroe, Louisiana. He frequently delivers powerful sermons with a no-holds-barred, fire-breathing approach. “My message is that human beings should love God and their neighbor. For heaven’s sake, I really do not see why human beings cannot be kind and caring without stealing and murdering each other for a pair of tennis shoes. That is my message”.
Unfortunately, Phil’s frankness earned him trouble in December of 2013, when he was asked by a GQ Magazine reporter what he thought was sinful. Phil replied, “Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men.” The comment ignited a storm in the media circles and Phil responded to the criticism by saying “I would never treat anyone with disrespect just because they are different from me.” Later that day, A&E, the producer of the Duck Dynasty TV show, suspended Phil from the show. After a strong negative response to the suspension, the suspension was lifted and Phil has continued to appear on the show.
Phil Facts
- Has four children, Alan, Jason (Jase), Willie, and Jules (Jeptha or Jep).
- Dips Copenhagen tobacco.
- Is estimated to be worth five million dollars.
- As quarterback for Louisiana Tech, he threw 179-for-411 with 2237 yards and twelve touchdowns. He had 34 interceptions.
- Star of the Outdoor Channel’s Buck Commander show and A&E’s Duck Dynasty
- Has a master’s degree in education
- Wrote an autobiography entitled “Happy, Happy, Happy: My Life and Legacy as the Duck Commander”
Quotes
- “Happy, Happy, Happy”
- “Si is a logical vacuum.”
- “Life was good back in the 60s…people were happy happy…happy, happy happy.”
- “I don’t want no yelpin woman! I want my woman to purr.”
- “In a subdivision, you call 911. At home, I AM 911 ! “
- “I’m a low-tech man in a high-tech world.”
- “It’s time to pee on the fire and call in the dogs boys.”
- “Hey, whatever lights a fire under ya.”
- “Here let me take that. I don’t want you to get a hernia. It took you 2 years to get over the last one.”
- ”I need to take a leak but there ain’t no cracks in this building.”
- “I want my grandkids to grow up in the great outdoors. The last thing I want is for them to grow up to be nerds.”
- “Women with whiskers… it’s a bummer.”
- “Ya’ll might want to go to Walmart and pick up a personality.”
- “Better a day’s catch of fish than a lifetime of crabs.”
- “I don’t want my grandkids comin to me sayin, “Papa, I got syphilis,” I know where that comes from.”
- “Don’t touch her below the neck until you sign the dotted line.”
- “Life is good! Color TV… A commode that flushes…”
- “All I need in a house is a place to eat, sleep, and a back room to chase Miss Kay around and I can do that right here, NOOOOOOO problem.”
- “I’m just glad I didn’t have a house full of girls. Seems like a nightmare to me.”
- “I’m trying to teach these grandkids of mine the Robertson way.”
- “I think our culture needs more grandpas ridin along with grandson and girlfriend.”
- “One more yuppy girl came a little closer to becoming a redneck today. America may be saved.”
- “Willie for president!”
- “When I see bright lights coming from a pretty good distance… I’m gone.”
- “City folk think these beavers are cute and cuddly animals, but they are destructors.”
- “If you can find a nice pretty country girl that can cook and carries her bible, now there’s a woman.”
- “His redneck blood is thinning.”
- “Crawfish have ding dongs and vaginas.”
- “My idea of happiness is killing things! Boom boom boom!”
- “Too many days in the subdivision. Snakes fall out of trees, you go a runnin.”
- “You need to be able to take a leak in your yard without someone saying, ‘Hey what’s he doing.'”
- “I don’t do the restaurant gigs, nooo, especially not in the middle of a beaver killing.”
- “I think that Russian scientist needs to do a little more research on the project. It should have been sold as a sleeping aid.”
- “Si with napalm causes you a little bit of consternation.”
- “Man against furry animals, I’ll win before it’s over.”
- “He can gnaw through a 2×6 like a knife going through butter. He’s the super beaver.”
- “You bring plenty of muscle and blood in your eye.”
- “Ducks are a lot like women…they don’t like mud on their butts.”
- “Mainly I use the grand kids, when it comes to crawfishin, as a labor pool.”
- “Most of Si’s stories you can classify as Si-ence fiction.”
- “She may be an ugly woman but if she cooks squirrel and dumplins, that’s the woman you go after.”
- “I removed the gizzards from the intestines and all the girls started to squeal.”
- “We don’t need a world full of straight A students. I’m an ole C average man myself. Si, he’s probably C minus.”
- “If you catch squirrels for your woman she will never cut you off in bed.”
- “The more makeup a woman wears the more she’s tryin to hide. Makeup can hide a lot of evil.”
- “‘Oh we’ll just live off love.’ No you won’t, you’ll just starve to death.”
- “Ain’t nothing smells worse than a dead turtle.”
- “A real man don’t call the plumbers. If he gonna call himself a man, he needs to know how to fix it, on the spot.”
- “Thank God the government shutdown is over so we can finally get back to the government letdown!”
- “Whoo hee hee, something’s smelling rude up in here. What you got going on?”
- “I think our problem is a spiritual one. Where there is no Jesus, evil always reigns.”
- “The things a man will do for a little honey on the biscuit.”
- “Dump it and hump it dude.”
- “Whatever fires your panties up.”
- “I’m fine as wine.”