The Duck Commander Family (27 page)

Kay loves her dogs. One time, Phil chopped a copperhead
in three pieces with a shovel, and then he picked up the snake’s head and threw it close to one of Kay’s dogs. Even though the snake was cut in three pieces, it somehow managed to bite the dog’s head and latch on to its eye. The dog’s head swelled up like a basketball. Phil looked at me and said, “Don’t tell your mother.” I was like, “Uh-huh, she’ll never notice.” The dog was fine. These are country dogs; they can take a little snake venom and keep on going. Phil is always throwing dead snakes at dogs to see their reaction, but not the poisonous ones anymore. He’s not going to take a chance on hurting one of Miss Kay’s beloved dogs.

With Kay, everything is an exaggeration and every conversation with her centers around food. When I call their house to talk to Phil, if Kay answers the phone, I have to listen to what they ate for lunch that day or dinner the previous night. I might be calling to talk to Phil about a big business deal, but Kay only wants to talk about how she cooked green beans, ham, and fresh corn, or how she’d already cooked lunch, but then a couple more people came over so she pulled a couple packages of sausage out of the freezer. Then she’ll ask you what you had for lunch and dinner, and she’ll want to know exactly how you cooked it. She always wants to know the details. Every conversation with her involves food, and it’s either the best thing she ever put in her mouth or it was a disaster. I’ll never forget the time she cooked meatloaf for Phil and ran out of ketchup. She never runs out of ketchup and couldn’t believe she’d let it happen. It was like the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor again.

Korie:
Kay is the most patient person I know. Phil, on the other hand, let’s just say patience is not his virtue. When we were filming Kay’s cooking video,
The Commander’s Kitchen,
Phil was getting a little aggravated with me because he didn’t want to wait to cook his frog legs. It was taking us a little while to set up the cameras and everything, and A&E was there to film an episode of
Duck Dynasty
so it took a lot longer than we expected. I kept telling Phil he had to wait to cook his frog legs until his scene. We were making a TV show, you know? But Phil didn’t want to ruin his frog legs, so I kept catching him trying to cook them, and I kept telling him he had to wait, and he was getting more and more frustrated.

We finally got to the scene where Phil was supposed to cook the frog legs, but then the A&E producers interrupted him. Phil gave me a look that indicated he was finished. Making sure his frog legs were perfect was the most important thing to him, not whether our cooking video or
Duck Dynasty
episode turned out right. I could only laugh and let him finish. Nobody tells Phil what to do, and I certainly wasn’t about to start. We made it work: he cooked the frog legs, and they tasted fantastic. This became the first episode of
Duck Dynasty
and we got a great cooking DVD out of it. It turned out to be a very good day.

I’m not sure Kay ever gets enough credit for helping our family and Duck Commander survive when times were tough.
Let’s face it: if Kay hadn’t been strong enough to forgive Phil for the way he acted when I was young, our family and consequently Duck Commander wouldn’t be here today. Thankfully, Kay’s heart was big enough to look past Phil’s transgressions and remember the man she married. After Phil kicked us out of the house, Kay made a thorough examination of her life and surrendered herself to Jesus Christ. She knew forgiving Phil was the right thing to do for her sons. If she wouldn’t have forgiven Phil for things he’d done, or if he hadn’t made changes in his life, we wouldn’t be here today. As Phil began his Christian walk, he realized Kay was the best thing that ever happened to him, and they’ve been happily married ever since.

During the past four decades, Phil and Kay have been through some very difficult times and tackled them together. In the early days of Duck Commander, Kay was burdened with how the bills were going to be paid. We sometimes joke about Kay’s not finishing high school—she gets mad at me when I tease her about it because she did receive her GED after Alan was born—but I think it’s pretty remarkable that she kept Duck Commander afloat for so long without having any kind of business background. When Phil started making duck calls, he was an excellent salesman, but other than that, he wanted nothing to do with the business side of the company. He just wanted to make his calls and hunt and fish.

Before Kay and Phil turned Duck Commander over to Korie and me, the company was doing over $1 million in sales. Kay was in charge of inventory, accounting, payroll, and bookkeeping, with the help of other members of the family, but she
was the one primarily in charge, and she had absolutely zero business training. She’d worked for Howard Brothers Discount Stores for a while, but Kay was in no way trained to oversee a multimillion-dollar business. She didn’t even have a desk! Every night, Phil would sit in a recliner in the living room, and Kay would sit by him at the end of the couch. She kept all of Duck Commander’s bills and sales orders in a little basket and that’s how she would run the business. It’s incredible when you think about it; we never would have made it without her.

Korie:
Willie has always wanted to impress Kay and help her as much as possible. He realized a long time ago that his mother was working extremely hard but never got much of the glory because Phil was the star of Duck Commander. Kay’s role was absolutely critical in the early days of Duck Commander. When we were dating, Willie and I painted Kay’s kitchen cabinets for her for Mother’s Day. She had a little tiny kitchen back then with not even a dishwasher, yet she cooked for the family and all the Duck Commander employees every day. There was so much grease on those cabinets from years of cooking, it was a miracle we ever got it all off to paint over it. Willie’s love for his parents has always motivated him to do special things for them and to take Duck Commander to the next level, and they have always been very supportive and appreciative of him. Whether Willie paints Kay’s kitchen, builds her something in the yard, cooks a great meal, or lands a big business deal, Kay has a special knack for bragging on him that makes him feel like a million bucks. She actually
does that for all of us, and especially her boys. Sometimes people think that you should motivate your kids or employees by yelling at them when they fail or pointing out all the things they did wrong, but just the opposite is true. God created us to thrive on encouragement from others. Kay figured that out a long time ago. She has the gift of encouragement and gives that gift to those she loves the most.

Whether it was in business or raising her family, Kay always managed to make it work even when times were hard and money was tight. Even though we have enough money now to eat big steaks, shrimp, and even lobster from time to time, we still love Kay’s old-fashioned meals, like hot-water cornbread, dumplings, and fried squirrels. In a lot of ways, her home-cooked meals brought us comfort when we needed it most, and now they remind us of where we came from and how hard we worked to get where we are today, which none of us ever want to forget.