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WEEK OF NOVEMBER 18: Birth of Larry Mahan
Howdy folks, it’s the fourth week of November, 2024, and welcome to This Week in The West.
I’m Seth Spillman, broadcasting from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.
On this podcast, we tell the stories of the people and events that shaped the history, art and culture of the American West – and those still shaping it today.
We’ve got to admit something right off the bat here, folks. When we first looked at the biography of Larry Mahan, we thought, “Can we fit all of that into a podcast that we, believe it or not, try to keep to only seven to eight minutes?”
But we’re sure Larry, one of the grittiest and greatest rodeo cowboys in history, wouldn’t want us just to give up.
So we’ll “cowboy up” and forge ahead to tell just some of the larger-than-life story of Larry Mahan, born this week, November 21, 1943.
Let’s get some of the superlatives out of the way. Larry’s rodeo career, which spanned decades, included:
- Winning six World All-Around Cowboy championships in the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, including five in a row from 1966 to 1970.
- Becoming the first cowboy to compete in three events at the same National Finals Rodeo.
- Setting a record — that still stands — by qualifying 26 times in NFR roughstock events.
- Winning two world bull riding championships in 1965 and 1967.
- Being inducted as a member of the National Rodeo Hall of Fame here at the Cowboy, the ProRodeo Hall of Fame, the PBR Ring of Honor (also here at The Cowboy), the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame, the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame.
- Being honored with the Ben Johnson Award from the Rodeo Historical Society and the Ty Murray Top Hand Award from the PBR.
And when he wasn’t on the back of a horse or a bull, Larry was a trend-setter in Western wear, with his own boot and clothing line; he cut country music albums, acted in movies and hosted television shows.
In 1973, Larry was the subject of a feature-length documentary called “The Great American Cowboy.” That year, it won the Academy Award.
The New York Times called him the Elvis of Rodeo.
“Football had Joe Namath, boxing had Muhammad Ali, and rodeo had Larry Mahan,” fellow rodeo hall of famer Bobby Steiner said in a newspaper interview. “I don’t know that anybody will ever know what ‘it’ is, but he had ‘it.’”
Larry was born and raised in Oregon, where his parents bought him his first horse when he was around seven years old. Not too long after, he was competing and winning in kids’ rodeos and doing the same in high school.
He turned professional at age 19, winning the national bull riding championship at 21, and a year later, his first all-around title.
“Winning is to me what alcohol is to the alcoholic, what dope is to the addict,” he said in a 1975 interview with the New York Times sports columnist Red Smith. “I’ve got to have it.”
By the 1970s, he was sitting down for interviews with Johnny Carson and posing for ads for his western shirts. With documentary cameras rolling, Larry was strapping himself into broncos and bulls and giving a raw look at the life of a cowboy.
In one fascinating scene in “The Great American Cowboy,” Larry sits atop a rodeo chute gate and talks to the students of his rodeo school. He tells him they’re going to learn all about how to keep from losing their grip on the back of a horse, sure, but they’re much more to rodeo than that.
“We’re going to get into the real things of rodeo,” Larry said. “How to hustle rides when you don’t have a car … If you lose your suitcase how to make it another two weeks without your suitcase … How to live on a hamburger a day. How to make it to the next rodeo with five dollars in your pocket … How to sleep 10 to a room. These are the important things of rodeo.”
Larry survived his own lean days as a young cowboy on the rodeo circuit to become a legend.
He stopped riding bulls and bareback broncs in 1977 and saddle broncs a few years after that. His last major title was in 1979. He continued to provide commentary on televised rodeo events. The sport he helped put on the map kept growing in popularity.
Larry was splitting time between two ranches, one in Valley View, Texas, and the other in Ada, Oklahoma when he spoke with Cowboys & Indians Magazine in 2022.
“I’ve had an opportunity to live four quarters of the game, and it’s in overtime as far as I’m concerned,” he told the magazine. “And you learn to appreciate every day.”
In 2021, he had been diagnosed with cancer.
“I kept it quiet,” Mahan told Cowboys & Indians, “so I could process how to handle it emotionally. And I came to the realization that it’s a challenge many people, young and old, have to deal with. And not everybody has horses, not everybody has cattle, not everybody has the lifestyle that we have the opportunity to live.”
Bone cancer would eventually take Larry’s life. He died on May 7, 2023
Larry Mahan was 79.
And with that we’ll call it a good ride and wrap up this episode of “This Week in The West.”
Our show is produced by Chase Spivey and written by Mike Koehler.
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We leave you today with some classic Larry Mahan wisdom: “Mistakes are only horses in disguise. Ain’t no need to ride ’em over ’cause we could not ride them different if we tried”.
Much obliged for listening and remember, come Find Your West at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.
