How many broken bones do you think Evel Knievel endured over the course of his lifetime?
We're about to find out the answer to that, and more, as we explore the tragic real-life
story of this iconic stuntman.
Evel Knievel was born Robert Craig Knievel on October 17, 1938, in Butte, Montana.
A hub for copper mining, early 20th century Butte more closely resembled a Wild West boom
town than a modern industrial city.
His parents Robert and Ann married at a young age.
Young Robert, called "Bob" by his family, was the first of their two sons, while brother
Nic arrived less than a year later.
At the age of 21, Bob Sr. really wasn't cut out to be a father or a husband to 17-year-old
Ann.
He had a reputation as a philanderer with little regard for responsibility.
While pregnant with Nic, Ann decided that she'd had enough, and after he was born, she
filed for divorce.
Bob then took off for California where he worked as a bus driver and raced cars.
Ann dropped little Bob and Nic off with their father’s parents, Ignatius and Emma, and
took off for Reno, Nevada.
Now in their late 40s, the elder Knievels were hardly up to the job of parenting young
children once again.
Suffering from what would later be defined as bipolar disorder, Ignatius would go for
months without speaking, while Emma simply wasn't equipped for life with two rambunctious
boys.
Life in hardscrabble Butte offered few opportunities for a restless Bob Knievel.
A poor student but a skilled athlete, who excelled at track and field and hockey, he
wasn't a bad kid.
But his endless energy, love of danger, and penchant for mischief kept him in trouble
for most of his adolescence.
As a teenager, Knievel was a con man and a wicked prankster.
In one of his most dangerous high school exploits, he convinced several of his classmates to
give him their belts, which he used to tie the school library's doors shut.
He then placed two large wastebaskets in front of the bound doors and lit their contents
on fire.
His target was the school librarian, who, for reasons unknown, had become his sworn
enemy.
Fire trucks were called to the scene, and Knievel faced stiff punishment.
Still, the consequences were worth it for the thrills.
When Knievel was 16, his father returned to Butte.
But if his intention was to be a paternal influence, he was too late.
After his junior year, Bob either dropped out or was expelled from Butte High School.
With no other prospects, he headed for an uncertain future in the copper mines.
With his education cut short, Bobby Knievel went to work for the Anaconda Copper Mining
Company, just like so many other young men in Butte.
The days were grueling and dangerous.
A mile below the earth, Knievel faced a myriad of occupational hazards ranging from mine
collapses and fires, to exposure to poisonous gases and lung disease.
Meanwhile, Knievel's father had returned from California and opened a Volkswagen dealership
with his dad.
Still holding the grudge of his father's abandonment, the future “Evil” pridefully rejected
an offer to work on the VW lot.
He eventually escaped the mines when he secured a bus driving position for Anaconda.
Tasked with ferrying his co-workers to and from the mines, he couldn't resist taking
a few risks on the road to frighten his passengers.
Soon enough, many of his colleagues refused to ride with him.
According to legend, he lost his job with the mining company when he attempted a wheelie
with a payloader.
The vehicle came down on a power cable, leaving most of Butte in darkness.
Out of work and fearing the draft, Knievel joined the Army Reserve.
However, the young daredevil's rebellious spirit made him a poor fit for military service.
After leaving the copper mine, Bobby Knievel bounced from job to job.
All the while, he indulged in death-defying antics and ran simple cons to alleviate his
boredom and make a few dollars.
Soon enough, he began drawing crowds with his motorcycle.
Patrons at a Butte A&W restaurant gathered to watch him attempt to climb a steep hill
behind the eatery.
His stunts drew a crowd, and in return, the manager gave him free food.
Knievel was also getting by in less savory ways.
An arrest for stealing a motorcycle landed him in jail, where some claim he picked up
his "Evel Knievel" moniker when a cop jokingly compared him to inept local criminal William
C. Knofel, known around the station as "Awful Knofel."
"We'd better double our guard.
We've got Evel Knievel and Awful Knofel."
Ever the thrill-seeker, young Evel graduated from stealing bikes to cracking safes.
However, fear of doing serious prison time was too much even for him.
As he told the producers of the 2005 documentary Absolute Evel,
"I had so much pressure on me.
I was scared to death I'd go to the penitentiary [...] I said to myself when I looked in the
mirror, 'What in the hell is the matter with you?'"
Knievel quenched his thirst for action in a number of ways outside of crime.
A skilled skier, he made some of his first daring jumps on the slopes, and while in the
Army, he took up pole-vaulting with some success.
At the age of 19, Knievel made a bid at starting a semi-pro hockey team, as the owner, coach,
and starting center of the Butte Bombers.
With a small amount of seed cash from his father and grandfather and a line of credit
from a local sporting goods store for uniforms and gear, he managed to attract a number of
players to whom he offered $50 per game.
The Bombers rarely saw any of that promised pay, but they stuck with the team out of a
love for the sport.
The Butte Bombers' one moment of glory nearly ended in an international incident.
In 1960, Knievel managed to set up an exhibition game with the Czechoslovakian Olympic hockey
team.
The Bombers lost, but Knievel literally made out like a bandit.
He did some impromptu fundraising between periods, ostensibly to help pay for the Czech
team's expenses.
But mysteriously, the Czech team's money and the gate receipts disappeared, and the U.S.
Olympic Committee was forced to foot the bill.
The Butte Bombers folded soon after, and Knievel left hockey behind.
Shortly after retiring from a life of crime, Knievel took a job as an insurance salesman.
But he soon discovered his greatest talent was selling himself, as he left insurance
to hawk motorcycles in Washington state.
His promotions, which included motorcycle jumps over rattlesnakes and mountain lions,
made him a local legend.
In 1966, he formed a troupe of stunt riders called "Evel Knievel and his Motorcycle Daredevils."
But the crew quickly disbanded, and he then went solo.
In 1967, Knievel got his first taste of fame when he successfully jumped 15 cars on ABC's
Wide World of Sports.
But he wanted more.
While visiting Las Vegas, he became enthralled with jumping the fountains at Caesars Palace.
He hounded Jay Sarno, the hotel's owner, with hoax phone calls posing as journalists looking
for details about some motorcycle stuntman who was going to jump the hotel's fountains.
Sarno, fooled by the ruse and seeing dollar signs, brought Knievel in to set up the event.
So on New Year's Eve 1967, Knievel cleared the fountains but came down short of the ramp's
edge.
The stunned crowd watched as his body limply cartwheeled and skidded across the pavement.
He suffered a crushed pelvis, a broken hip, a broken nose, a fractured jaw, broken ribs
and head injuries that left him in a coma for weeks.
Miraculously, he recovered.
When he regained consciousness, he was a worldwide superstar.
"But the story of Bob Knievel almost dying, and then, you know, not dying would've been
a much better story, and so that was the story they decided to engineer."
Knievel had been talking about jumping the Grand Canyon long before the ill-fated Caesars
Palace fountain jump that propelled him to fame.
The idea came to him during a night of heavy drinking in 1966.
When a friend jokingly suggested that he try jumping the Arizona landmark, he took the
jest as a legitimate challenge.
He managed to get permission to jump the Grand Canyon from the Department of the Interior
and tentatively scheduled the stunt for July 4, 1968.
However, the agency withdrew its consent when they realized he was serious.
Undaunted, Knievel then turned his sights to Idaho's Snake River Canyon.
In 1974, he would attempt to traverse the one mile chasm in a specially constructed,
steam-powered vehicle named the Sky Cycle X-2.
As detailed in the 1998 documentary, Evel Knievel: The True Story, the usually fearless
stuntman was fatalistic about his odds of surviving the stunt.
Although the Sky Cycle didn't make it to the other side because of a malfunctioning parachute,
Knievel managed to cheat death once again.
Alas, the perceived failure of his grandest stunt would mark the beginning of a career
downturn.
"Knievel had survived, but almost immediately there were serious doubts about what really
happened."
Although Evel Knievel liked to present himself as a tough-talking but clean-living role model,
the truth of his private life was a far cry from his public image.
The ugly truth of his life behind the scenes was laid bare in 1977 with the publication
of Sheldon Saltman's tell-all book Evel Knievel on Tour.
Saltman got an insider's view of life on the road with the famed daredevil while working
with Knievel on the 1974 Snake River Canyon jump and the 62-city tour designed to hype
the event.
He witnessed firsthand Knievel's womanizing, heavy drinking, out-of-control ego, fiery
temper, and, most disturbingly, his abusive behavior toward his wife Linda.
The publication of Saltman's unflattering portrait sent Knievel into a rage.
He tracked Saltman down and viciously beat him unconscious with an aluminum baseball
bat, severely shattering his arm in the process.
The assault landed Knievel in Los Angeles County Jail and cost him his career.
In 1959, Knievel married 17-year-old Linda Bork.
They had four children together: sons Kelly and Robbie, and daughters Tracey and Alicia.
They were married for 38 years, but their long union was anything but blissful.
Knievel's archaic attitude toward marriage and family life coupled with his unbridled
ego made Linda a second-class citizen in her own home.
As a neighbor of the Knievels told biographer Leigh Montville,
"He beat his wife.
That was not romance.
Everyone in town knew it [...] Linda is just the nicest person.
Linda is class.
Evel was not class."
Despite the infidelity and abuse, Linda stood by her man for nearly four decades, until
they divorced in 1997.
Knievel didn't stay a bachelor for long.
Two years after his divorce, he married Krystal Kennedy, a golfer from Florida, whom he'd
been seeing since 1992.
Their marriage was short-lived, ending in 2001.
In 2002, Kennedy-Knievel, then 32, filed a restraining order against her 63-year-old
ex-husband, accusing him of hitting her and making threatening phone calls.
In turn, he accused her of threatening him with a gun in a post-divorce dispute over
jewelry.
Amazingly, they reconciled and remained together until Knievel's death in 2007.
Knievel's life as the world's greatest daredevil took a devastating toll on his body.
As of 2021, he holds the Guinness World Record for the most broken bones in a lifetime, with
433, which he set in 1975.
By 2006, Knievel required an internal morphine pump to alleviate the near constant pain he
suffered from fractured vertebrae.
His recklessness also had less obvious consequences, like hepatitis C, and a 2004 diagnosis of
idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a rare terminal disease that causes scarring and thickening
of lung tissue.
Doctors gave him just three years to live.
In his final interview, Knievel waxed philosophically about his mortality, as he told Vanity Fair's
Douglas Brinkley in 2007,
"All my life people have been waitin' around to watch me die.
But I'm still here.
I really think that there is a hereafter and this is just a testing ground [...] I defied
death.
And I'm still doing it."
With his body ravaged by the effects of diabetes, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, alcoholism,
and the after-effects of innumerable motorcycle crashes, Knievel died at his Clearwater, Florida,
home on November 30, 2007 at the age of 69.
His body was returned to his hometown of Butte for burial.
Actor Matthew McConaughey eulogized his childhood hero by proclaiming,
"He's forever in flight now.
He doesn't have to come back down."
"I will never, ever, ever jump again."
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