Working With Kenny Stabler: Wyoming Radio Man Recalls Wild Days With The Snake

There is a photograph showing Dave Montgomery supine on a manicured golf course, a tee and golf ball clenched between his teeth.

Above him stands Kenny Stabler, the rakish quarterback who led the Oakland Raiders to Super Bowl glory in 1977. 

Stabler casually addresses the ball with his driver.

It's an image that suggests both absolute trust and a certain performative masochism — the kind of thing that happens when a playful, Wyoming work ethic collides with the anything-goes ethos of professional sports in the Reagan era.

Montgomery, who has spent the better part of five decades as one of Wyoming's most colorful media hustlers, is finally ready to step away from the microphone.

The sale of his personal empire — Montgomery Broadcasting, the Cowboy State News Network, KFBC AM/FM, and the streaming service KFBC TV — represents a chance to hand the baton to someone young and scrappy, like he once was, back when he was asked to leave the University of Wyoming and wound up in Vietnam. 

As his Wyoming Broadcasting Hall of Fame induction video delicately phrases it, UW administrators found it necessary to "strongly suggest he'd take a short hiatus from college until he found himself.”

Montgomery, who had enrolled with vague aspirations toward law, discovered that his true gifts lay elsewhere: "skiing, poker, parties and drinking beer."

His Vietnam tour of duty working in the motor pool at Tan Son Nhut Air Base was uneventful, with Montgomery practicing photography and counting the days. 

Back home in Cheyenne, he hired on as a part-time photographer at the Wyoming State Tribune. Then Montgomery was abruptly promoted to sports editor when his predecessor showed up drunk. His response to the promotion revealed a refreshing honesty and proclivity toward self-deprecation. 

"I've never written a sports story in my life," Montgomery told his editor, who apparently didn’t care. It was the early 1970s and Montgomery's solution was as free-wheeling as the times. 

Montgomery simply plagiarized existing stories from the paper's archives, changing names and statistics to match current games. 

It was, he admits, "Mad Libs" journalism, but it worked to kickstart a go-go career that thrust him into a melee of football teams fist-fighting, celebrity coaches and athletes shouting and Montgomery proving himself to be a broadcasting MacGyver. 

My Man Kenny

Back when Kenny “The Snake” Stabler was evolving from a bearded sex symbol of the 1970s to the white-haired bon vivant of those Reagan years, Montgomery was his wingman and business partner.

Stabler’s shock of perfectly coiffed white hair made him look like he just founded a megachurch. But for Stabler, commandments were made for breaking. 

In a profile published during Stabler’s sexy, bearded years, Sports Illustrated wrote, “It was now close to 5 p.m. Surrounded by reeling pals, beautiful girls and an array of empty or partially drained glassware — beer bottles, Bloody Marys, Salty Dogs, Seven and Sevens — he grinned at a newcomer.”

When the SI reporter approached Stabler, “He unwrapped his thick left arm from a petite blonde, who emerged like a bauble from the shadow of his armpit — "meet Wanda." She smiled demurely, then stuck out her tongue.”

This is the world Montgomery fell into. It’s how he landed flat on his back with a tee in his mouth and a front-row seat to the end of an unfiltered era.

Through his partnership with Stabler, Montgomery witnessed the last days of a pre-internet golden age, back before athletes were known as influencers and needed to worry about the video camera on everyone’s phone. 

“Since it is virtually impossible to catch Stabler at rest, any portrait of him must convey his nonstop motion,” reported Sports Illustrated, describing the force that eventually swept up Montgomery. 

Witness To War

One of the most infamous plays in NFL history is known as “The Holy Roller.” 

It was 1978 and Stabler was the starting quarterback for the Oakland Raiders. In a game against San Diego, Stabler fumbled the ball forward, which led to a game-winning touchdown for Oakland. 

The NFL responded with the "Ken Stabler Rule," no longer allowing forward plays with a fumble. 

Montgomery watched Stabler and the NFL from Fort Collins at the time. To the chagrin of his UW college buddies, Montgomery took a job broadcasting Colorado State University games, including the ‘78 showdown that resulted in an epic fist fight. 

Kevin McKinney, who would become the voice of Wyoming athletics, was there. He described for Cowboy State Daily the surreal buildup to a legendary brawl. 

Strangely, the Cowboys warmed up alone on CSU’s home field. 

“They didn't have their pre-game in the stadium,” said McKinney. “We come out, go through our pre-game, kicking, throwing, running and all that stuff? There's no sheep.” 

"It was getting close to kickoff time and they still weren't anywhere to be found,” remembered Montgomery. “Then they pulled up behind the stadium on the east side and the team came down through the student section.”

And they kept coming. 

“I remember the officials hadn't even come on the field yet when they came on,” said Montgomery, describing the emotionally charged pre-game moments just before the clash. 

"They came jumping over the rail," McKinney remembered, still marveling at the audacity. "It was an absolute brawl before we ever snapped one play."

Both teams received 15-yard penalties for unnecessary roughness before the game began. Wyoming ended up winning, 13-3, and Montgomery ended up moving back across the border. 

Enter Curt Gowdy

Curt Gowdy owned radio stations that broadcast Cowboy games and in Montgomery, Gowdy saw a way to hold on to these live broadcasts. 

“And he came to me and said, ‘I can't afford to lose these, these broadcasts,’” recalled Montgomery. “He said, ‘Would you come over?’ And we formed a company called Curt Gowdy Sports."

Gowdy is a legendary broadcaster who had begun his career at KFBC in Cheyenne before becoming the voice of the Boston Red Sox and a network television fixture. 

With Montgomery’s help, Curt Gowdy Sports grew into a network that reached 37 stations across five states. It was a success, and with it came the beginnings of a social life that opened doors to professional athletes and celebrity coaches. 

He met New Orleans Saints legend Archie Manning, who was traveling at the time with his young sons, Peyton and Eli. Into Montgomery’s rolodex dropped names like Walter Payton and Tom Landry and Bobby Knight. 

At a charity golf event in Durango, Colorado, Montgomery met Stabler. 

One night at Jackson's Hole — a bar in downtown Denver — someone in Stabler’s party ordered hot wings and they arrived looking defeated, a plate of orange mediocrity. They complained to management and Montgomery said he suddenly found himself back in the kitchen with Stabler cooking up a new batch of wings. 

They served their creation to those gathered in the bar, and the response was ravenous. Jackson's Hole had found its new signature recipe. As random fans and bar patrons chowed down the wings, they started buying Stabler drinks and listening to his stories. 

Inevitably, someone asked to see his Super Bowl ring. 

Unlike most Super Bowl champions who lock their rings in safes, the Snake wore his everywhere and would casually hand it to anyone who asked to see it.

"The ring gets passed around the bar," Montgomery explained. "Maybe 150 people. My job was to keep an eye on the ring and make sure it got back on Kenny's finger."

It's a perfect metaphor for their relationship: Stabler, the carefree libertine, creating magic and chaos in equal measure; Montgomery, the mindful body man, making sure nothing got lost in the revelry.

The Knight Move

Montgomery’s friendship with Stabler grew into a business partnership when they created Kenny Stabler Speaking of Sports. The pair harvested the connections they had made on the celebrity golf and speaking circuit, focusing it all into a new speakers bureau with Montgomery pitching and booking events all over the country. 

"These were good-sized speaking events. Some were $25,000 and up for a speech,” said Montgomery describing the late 1980s, long before TED Talks and nonstop YouTube motivational content. 

“Between retired coaches and everybody else, I think we probably had about 150 to 160, all famous, athletes and coaches,” said Montgomery. 

Managing big personalities was at the core of the job. Especially when dealing with legendary hothead Bobby Knight, famed coach of the Indiana Hoosiers. 

When a client from International Harvester requested a preview tape of Knight's speech, Montgomery made the mistake of passing along the request.

"’You tell that bitch I do 15 speaking engagements a year for $25,000 each," Knight exploded, displaying the charm that made him such a beloved figure in college basketball. "Tell them to go to hell."

Knight didn't speak to Montgomery for a month.

Around 1992, Montgomery started to wind down the speakers bureau and consider a move into Cheyenne broadcasting. 

"It got to be so cutthroat,” Montgomery said, recalling his final weeks on the celebrity speaking circuit.  “We just had to get out of it."

Radio MacGyver

With his return to broadcasting came a trip up north to the Great Alaskan Shootout, where the Wyoming Cowboys men’s basketball team was set to play. 

But there was a problem: Montgomery could not get the live radio feed up and out on the airwaves. 

“Things went awry with the actual equipment itself, and they had a problem, and he literally got tinfoil and gum and got them on the air,” remembered McKinney. “He went to that extreme. And everybody, the other broadcasters, were totally impressed with this guy from Wyoming.”

Now, as he’s looking to sell Montgomery Broadcasting, industry watchers like Laura Grott wonder who will take over the Cowboy State News Network, KFBC and KFBCtv. There’s word the Northern Ag Network is interested. 

"He told me he'd like to sell it as a package to someone from Wyoming who understands Wyoming media better than someone that might come from back East somewhere or something,” said Grott. 

Those who've worked with Montgomery describe a fascinating contradiction: a man who cultivated gruffness while secretly possessing what longtime staffer Cathy Jarosh called "a big heart."

During a spring snowstorm that closed schools in Cheyenne, employees brought their children to the station. 

"It looked more like a daycare than a workplace," Jarosh recalled. "Dave did his best to look grumpy about it, but I know he got a kick out of it."

Reflecting back on his days with Stabler and their company’s stable of celebrity speakers, Montgomery seems to project a little of his own feelings about this moment as he moves into retirement. 

"People were hungry to be with them, be involved with them,” said Montgomery of the famous sports figures he once managed. “They would go and they would speak, but they would then mingle. It was a much more personal approach. These guys were just regular guys who were happy that somebody remembered them."

David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.