How Duck Dynasty couples met: Phil Robertson and Miss Kay

All Duck Dynasty’s lovable, sweet tea-swilling couples are anchored by long-standing, rock-solid marriages.

The Robertson couples – from patriarch and matriarch Phil and Kay on down to their sons and daughters-in-law – are definitely having and holding, for richer and for poorer , in sickness and in health, for as long as they both shall live.

Check out how these happily married couples met, long before they were featured on hit A&E reality series Duck Dynasty.

Phil Robertson and Miss Kay

The high school sweethearts started dating when Kay was just 14 and got married in 1966 when she was 16. They were practically an old married couple when Phil Robertson attended Louisiana Tech on a football scholarship; he even started ahead of the now-legendary Terry Bradshaw and turned down an offer to play in the NFL to concentrate on duck hunting.

“They had me there when they first got to Tech, so he was also a little different than the modern athlete,” their oldest son, Alan Robertson, told ESPN.

(Alan Robertson is a minister who is not on Duck Dynasty)

“He already had a family at that young of an age. I think that hunting, some of it was just providing for us. So I think that changed a bit of his attitude and allowed him to walk away a little bit easier, you know.”

Phil Robertson and Miss Kay’s love story hasn’t always been happy, though. In the ’70s, Phil Robertson was “headed south” – running a bar, drinking, getting into fights.

In his autobiography, The Duck Commander Family, son Willie Robertson recounts how his father Phil kicked out his family in a drunken rage, then begged Miss Kay to come back.

“What kept me there? What made me stay with him? It was words my grandmother said: <<One man, one wife, for one life>>,” Kay Robertson told Sports Spectrum.

Phil Robertson turned to religion to change his life, and Miss Kay forgave him. They’re still together more than 45 years later!