Page 91 - September 2022

Passions
But that’s not all.
college. “Animal science was pretty useful to me because up until then, I’d spent most of my time farming and raising hogs,” he says. “I was in FFA as a high school kid, and I got pretty serious about trying to raise the very best hogs that I could. My kids were very active, too.
My daughters showed lambs, the boys showed steers, and they all showed hogs and were brought up in that atmosphere of competing and learning how to work.”
Gwen graduated from Tillman High School in Paducah and then worked as office manager for a big furniture firm there. “She kept up with almost $10 million a year and she does the same thing here at Williams Racing and Williams Farms. She can tell you to the penny how much money is in every bank account we have!” Randy says.
They met on Matchmaker.com. “They kept trying to find me a gal that knew about horses,
and I told them one day that I knew about horses. I just needed a good partner. I got me a city girl and it’s been the best thing that ever happened
to me!” he says. “After we got married, she fell in love with the horses, too, and I really think she loves them even more than I do. She works at it every day and I don’t think she’s missed a day going to the barn in 24 years unless she was so sick, she couldn’t get up!”
THEIR ROADS TO RACING
“I was a crazy kid and now I’m a crazy old man,” Randy jokes. “I’ve always loved horses. I used to ride along with my mom to Paducah when she’d go shopping, just to see the ponies at a place up there.
“I was raised pretty poor as a kid but when I was about 12, my dad sold some cattle at
the auction across the river in Missouri and
brought me back a little old half horse/half pony that he’d paid $90 for,” Randy adds. “I thought my mom was going to divorce him for wasting that $90 on buying me a pony!”
Randy and a friend began training some Quarter Horse fillies for the local veterinarian and by the time Randy was 16, he’d taught himself enough about riding and training to earn the title of 4-H Horseman of the Year on one of them. “That was the first really nice horse I got to ride,” he says.
Randy and his first wife had bred a mare to a stud with running blood and around 1985, when Bluegrass Downs opened in Paducah,
he went to watch a race. “I watched a mare named Billie White Shoe race there,” he says. “It was a $2,500 claimer and to be honest, at that particular time I didn’t understand what a claimer meant. The horse won at 250 yards,
““After we got married, she fell in love with the horses, too, and I really think she loves them even more than I do.” – Randy Williams says of his wife Gwen
SPEEDHORSE September 2022 89
Sheri Andrew
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