The ride of her life: Rodeo legend Pam Minick credits native Las Vegas for her success

“So, I have to brag just a little,” Pam Minick says.

The Las Vegas native, who parlayed a Miss Helldorado title into a career that made her one of the most recognizable names in rodeo, had to postpone this interview by a day. The culprit? A celebrity golf tournament near her ranch outside Fort Worth, Texas.

It was the first time Minick had played in more than a year. She hit a hole in one. Because, of course she did.

The day before, she’d won first place at a horse show in Oklahoma.

“I’m a competitor,” Minick, 72, acknowledges. “From the time I was 9 years old and joined 4-H, the first thing I did was start going to gymkhanas and junior rodeos. I think that’s in someone’s nature. You’re either competitive or you’re not.”

That competitive streak took her all the way to the ProRodeo Hall of Fame, where she was inducted in July. She and her husband, longtime cowboy and stock contractor Billy Minick, will become the 20th and 21st recipients of the Legend of ProRodeo award during the Hall of Fame’s annual Wrangler Gold Buckle Gala on Dec. 1 at South Point.

To quote from the video that accompanied her induction: “No woman has made a bigger impact in the world of rodeo.”

Las Vegas ‘gave me the gumption’

Minick wasn’t just born and raised in Las Vegas. She was forged by the city.

Some of the experiences that helped shape her feel like rites of passage from the era: attending dinner shows as an 8-year-old, meeting Elvis backstage at the International and having Evel Knievel skid to a stop near her after ragdolling across the Caesars Palace parking lot.

Then there was the time Western balladeer Marty Robbins presented her with a cake for her 16th birthday. To this day, Minick isn’t sure why, but she suspects it may have had something to do with her after-school job in the Hacienda’s publicity department.

Minick spent plenty of time riding James Caan’s horse in 1972, the year he starred as Sonny Corleone in “The Godfather.” The actor kept the horse, named Mouse, at local gaming executive Dean Shendal’s ranch, where Minick often rode.

“When you’re running for Miss Rodeo Nevada and you ride James Caan’s horse, that’s not bad,” Minick says. “And it sounds so name-drop-y, but it’s just how we were. That’s what it was like growing up in Vegas.”

The city hadn’t yet cast off its small-town Western roots, and every bit of her youth helped set her on a path to success.

“I truly think that the ability to grow up unfazed by anything in Las Vegas is what gave me the gumption to just walk through every door.”

An unorthodox beginning

Like most little girls, Minick (nee Martin) wanted a horse.

She grew up on 5 acres just off Bermuda Road between the airport and what’s now the 215 Beltway — Pamalyn Avenue was named for her and her sister, Lynn — but her parents were not horse people.

When they met in Los Angeles, her father, Ralph, was a chauffeur for William Randolph Hearst, and her mother, Edith, was an aspiring actress. Once they settled in Las Vegas, Ralph ran the Caesars parking lot, and Edith was the photographer at Joe W. Brown’s Horseshoe Club, taking photos of visitors in front of the display of a million dollars in cash.

Edith was gregarious and would talk to anybody about anything. One day while Minick swam at the old Rocking Horse Ranch, Edith struck up a conversation with a couple of entrepreneurs who were abandoning their dream of opening a hotel. They had two palominos who had pulled a wagon up and down the Strip as a publicity stunt, Edith bought them for $300 each, and Rebel and Rio became part of the family.

The 9-year-old Minick rode Rebel bareback until an aunt in California sent a saddle that the sisters shared. They would ride along Las Vegas Boulevard, followed by their goat named Jezebel, as they picked pomegranates from the trees that grew in the medians. Motorists arriving from California must have wondered if Las Vegas was really as glamorous as they had heard.

Within six months of getting Rebel, Minick was competing, buoyed by the confidence that came from not realizing just how unorthodox her path really was.

“Here’s the blessing,” Minick says. “We didn’t know what we didn’t know, so there were no limitations.”

Hitting the road

When Minick turned 16, her father bought her a Chevy El Camino, and she was off.

Rodeo was more of a Northern Nevada thing in 1969. Aside from Las Vegas, the other organized committees were in Ely, Elko, Fallon, Battle Mountain and Winnemucca.

On Fridays after school, Minick would fill her tank with 19-cent-a-gallon gas. If she hit the road with her two-horse trailer by 3 p.m., she could make the unaccompanied drive to Fallon by midnight. Competition typically started at 8 or 9 the next morning.

Told that the idea of a 16-year-old girl hauling horses late at night on some of the loneliest roads in America sounds risky, Minick scoffs.

“That’s how we rolled!”

Plenty of other kids her age made those trips each weekend, she says, illustrating just how different the times were.

Once, when the bearings in her trailer went out in Ely, she was rescued from the side of the road by a rodeo clown.

Becoming rodeo royalty

At the end of 1971, Minick was coming off a season that saw her win the state high school barrel racing championship en route to becoming the first woman named Nevada Cowboys Association Rookie of the Year.

That year’s Miss Rodeo America staged the horsemanship portion of its competition at Shendal’s ranch. Minick taught contestants some of the skills, such as goat tying, she felt they already should have had.

“Well, there’s a difference between being a cowgirl and being a rodeo queen. And I had a vision that all rodeo queens were just big hair and fluff,” Minick says, mimicking the attitude she had at the time. “And I, excuse me, was a cowgirl.”

Shendal told her something to the effect of, “If you think it’s so easy, why don’t you do it?”

Five months later, she did.

“No one was more surprised than I was,” Minick says of being named Miss Helldorado 1972 at a time when the annual Western celebration was one of the biggest events in Las Vegas.

She won Miss Rodeo Nevada at the state fair in Reno that September. By the end of November, she was Miss Rodeo America. To this day, Selena Ulch of Sparks in 2004 is the only other Nevadan to win that crown.

Minick credits Universal Models owner Judi Moreo for taking her under her wing during her pageant journey.

“She had to put a lot of polish on this piece of coal,” Minick says. “It’s been 53 years since I won Miss Rodeo America, and I still think they made a mistake.”

Seeing the country

Being crowned Miss Rodeo America at the Frontier was the beginning of the end of Minick’s time as a Las Vegan.

The 19-year-old, at the time the pageant’s youngest winner, hit the road for months on end. It was reported that she traveled with eight suitcases and two boxes that could hold a total of 24 hats. She cops to the eight suitcases but thinks the number of hats may have been an exaggeration.

“It was probably more like 18 hats,” Minick says. “I’m a much better packer now. I can go for a week with an overnight bag.”

Her travels took her to rodeo towns, where she’d have breakfast with the Rotary Club and lunch with the Kiwanis Club before the competition that night.

In Los Angeles, she taught guest host McLean Stevenson to ride a mechanical bull on “The Tonight Show.” In New York, she appeared on an episode of “To Tell the Truth.”

“I had to go in a day early and meet these girls,” Minick recalls, “and bring them apparel and teach them as much as I could about rodeo and how to lose their New York accent in 24 hours.”

They split $100 for fooling two of the show’s four panelists.

During her reign, Minick met rodeo cowboy and auto dealer Tex Earnhardt. She moved to Chandler, Arizona, at the end of 1973, and they married the next year. It didn’t last — “I call that my practice husband,” she says — and they split in 1982.

Work brought her to the Fort Worth Stockyards in December that year, and she ran into Billy Minick. They’d met a couple of times, but she hadn’t remembered. This time, she says, “It was like one of those ‘Baywatch’ (scenes) where everything happens in slow motion.”

He asked if she’d like to come see the Beach Boys play Billy Bob’s Texas, where he was the general manager. They married the following May.

Back in the saddle

The Minicks have four horses, two steers and a donkey on their 30-acre ranch in suburban Argyle. She rides almost every day and brings in more cattle when she practices roping.

Last August, Minick noticed some hip pain but initially shrugged it off.

“I thought, ‘Well, I’m 71. I’m riding three horses a day. I probably should have pain in my hip.’ ”

She was diagnosed with a stress fracture. Then an MRI revealed acute leukemia.

“Literally,” Minick says, “I went from the doctor’s office to 26 days in the hospital.”

She underwent seven months of high-dose chemotherapy, during which she couldn’t ride. With a weakened immune system, Minick couldn’t risk being around the bacteria horses carry.

She started riding again in March. At her first horse show back, she won her class.

Because, of course she did.

On July 10, Minick became the first woman to receive the PBR Jim Shoulders Lifetime Achievement Award during the annual Heroes & Legends Ceremony in Oklahoma City.

She and Billy made the 180-mile drive home that night. After showering, she felt a lump near her collarbone. With that weighing on her mind, the Minicks flew to Colorado Springs for her ProRodeo Hall of Fame induction on July 12. When she returned, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

“That’s just an ‘oh, by the way,’ ” Minick says of the revelations that began as an aside. “Because I don’t want it to sound like I live this glorious life where everything is peachy keen, because we all have some trials and tribulations.”

She’s quick to note that the latest diagnosis did not affect her golf game.

It certainly didn’t rob her of her sassiness.

A career full of firsts

“The spirit of our Legend of ProRodeo award is to recognize someone who devotes their time and energy to the rodeo community, even after their rodeo career is over,” Therese Cobb, director of the ProRodeo Hall of Fame and Museum of the American Cowboy, wrote in an email.

Minick’s resume is as strong as anyone’s.

She qualified for the Women’s Professional Rodeo Association World Finals 16 times and won the WPRA Breakaway Roping World Championships in 1982. Minick became a WPRA director in 1978 and served as the organization’s vice president for 16 years.

She’s hosted or contributed commentary to thousands of hours of programming across ESPN, NBC, CBS, The Outdoor Network and the Cowboy Channel. Her weekly “American Rancher” series on RFD-TV has been running for 22 years.

She promoted country music and the Western lifestyle for more than 25 years as the marketing director at Billy Bob’s Texas, known as the world’s largest honky tonk, where she and Billy are part of the ownership group.

Minick will join Benny Binion (2014) and Michael Gaughan (2017) as Legend of ProRodeo award winners with strong Las Vegas ties.

“Great choice. Well deserved,” Gaughan said in a statement. “She has been involved in rodeo as long as anyone. I’m happy to be in the same club as her.”

Minick will be the first woman in that club. During the National Finals Rodeo, she also will receive the Montana Silversmiths Breaking Trail Leadership Award in recognition of a career full of firsts.

She was the first woman to earn an announcer card from the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association and the first female rodeo commentator on national TV.

In 2023, she became the first recipient of the Pam Minick Lifetime Achievement Award. Presented by The Women’s Rodeo World Championship, the bronze-plated pair of women’s cowboy boots symbolizes the contributions the winner has made to Western sports and the impact they have left on rodeo. The following year, Minick presented it to Reba McEntire.

“It’s the icing on the cake,” Minick says of awards and recognition, “but it really kind of makes me blush just a little bit.”

Everything else, whatever competition was within her control, Minick always expected to win.

It all goes back to that confidence she gained in her hometown.

“All the great parts of Vegas shaped me into who I am today,” Minick says. “Las Vegas was very, very good to me.”