Roberts, Ken

Ken Roberts, born Jan. 22, 1918, won three consecutive bull riding championships after beginning his rodeo career with the Clyde Miller Wild West Show as a three-event contestant in 1933. His first ProRodeo bull riding victory in Chicago in 1936 encouraged him to enter the professional circuit full-time. The following year he won all three riding events in Chicago, which included making a qualified ride on Yellowstone, a bull never before ridden. Growing up in a rodeo family, Roberts got his start bucking animals out of a shotgun (front-opening) chute on Sunday afternoons. With his father, Roberts went into the rodeo stock contracting business in the mid-1940s, but he continued competing and won day money in the bull riding in Denver’s National Western at age 50. He died Sept. 13, 1975. He was inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame in 1979.