Page 90 - September 2022

Courtesy Williams Farms
Shared
Randy and Gwen Williams share a passion for breeding and racing Quarter Horses.
Rby Diane Rice
andy Williams still lives less than half
a mile from his boyhood home in La
Center, Kentucky. For the past 24 years since they married, he and his wife Gwen have bred and raced Quarter Horses from their farming and horse operations there.
They share the work, they share the challenges, and they share the joys. They also share a lifelong love for music. “I’m not good at talking to people,” Gwen says, “but if you ask me to sing, I’m ready!”
During school, she sang in swing choir and chancel choir, touring Europe in 1971 to sing in cathedrals in Paris, Switzerland, Belgium, and Holland. She’s a longtime member of her church choirs and has sung in the Paducah City Concert Choir and the local college choir.
“When we got married in 1998, Randy went to my concerts,” she adds. “He was actually the
drummer in a rock band called the Bed Bugs in his younger days. We still have fun singing all the old rock and roll songs while we’re traveling.”
The couple’s dedication to each other and to their horse operation has brought them success that far exceeds the size of their operation. “One thing that impresses me so much is that you’re not talking about a breeder who’s got 50- 60 foals each year; statistically, their percentage is really impressive,” says longtime friend and trainer Heath Taylor, who has known Randy since before he married Gwen. “A lot of it
is based on their handling of the horses at a young age. They’re exceptionally in-tune with their horses. And they do a lot of breeding research into what mares will fit with what studs. They’ve been very smart; they’ve kept the right horses. And they’re tremendously hard workers who really, really want to win.”
THEIR EARLY DAYS
Randy, the son of Tom and Burnette Williams, is the lone horse lover among his parents, brother, and half-sister. “No one in the whole bunch has any interest in the horses but me,” he says. “We have three children and six grandkids, and they have their own lives and do what they want, and I’m an old man and do what I want, and that’s play with the horses!”
According to Randy, Gwen—one of three daughters born to Bill and Peggy Oliver of Senatobia, Mississippi—didn’t know much about horses when he met her. “She was a city girl and her family moved to Paducah, Kentucky, in 1968.”
Randy, who earned an animal science degree from Murray State University, located 60 miles southeast of La Center, in 1971, was the first person in his family to graduate from
““They’re exceptionally in-tune with their horses. And they do a lot of breeding research into what mares will fit with what studs.” – Heath Taylor
88 SPEEDHORSE September 2022
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