Roper’s rodeo wish comes true when he ties knot with singer
When Tyson Durfey saw a woman standing near the fruit bowl inside the hospitality room at Houston Rodeo, he couldn’t help but stop and stare.
In 2010, Durfey was a 26-year-old calf roper and a regular on the rodeo scene. He could usually predict who would be around for competitions; he expected to know everyone in the hospitality room. But he had never seen Shea Fisher there before.
“I thought, holy cow, who is that?” Durfey recalls.
Fisher was a 21-year-old country singer from Australia. A record producer had lured her to the U.S., so she was living in Nashville and working on her music.
She did a little modeling on the side, and when she came to Texas for a gig with a Western clothing company, friends who were competing in the Houston rodeo invited her to watch. She came on a whim.
‘Oh my goodness’
There in the hospitality room, Durfey walked over and introduced himself. As soon as he heard Fisher’s Australian accent, his mind was made up: “I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, that is going to be my wife.’ ”
For Fisher, it wasn’t quite love at first sight. She had just gotten out of a serious relationship with her longtime boyfriend in Australia. She was focused on her singing career. She wasn’t looking to date anyone. But she remembers being impressed that Durfey won his round at the rodeo that night. He struck her as the kind of man she could marry — if she had time to date him.
The next day she sent him a Facebook message: It was nice meeting him, she wrote.
Durfey took that as a sign.
It took more than six months of Facebook messages back and forth between the two before Fisher would give him her phone number.
Even though the couple grew up thousands of miles apart, they had similar upbringings: Both are from rodeo families.
Durfey’s father passed down tie-down roping to his three sons. While growing up in Missouri, Durfey says, his family focused on rodeo competitions and nothing else. In the 1970s, his dad even competed at the Houston rodeo.
Durfey competed at his first Houston rodeo in 2004. Last year, he won the Houston championship for tie-down roping, then went on to snag the world championship.
Fisher and her parents competed in rodeos as well. Her dad rides bulls, and her mom is a champion barrel racer. She took after both parents, competing in both bull riding and barrel racing.
Singing country music came naturally to Fisher. As a kid, she sang to her reflection in the mirror. She performed for her family.
An Australian record label signed her when she was only 16. When she was 20, a Nashville label came courting, and she moved to the U.S.
Just one thing was missing.
“I remember being in Nashville and saying to Mom, ‘Wow I’m so lonely. I need a boyfriend,” Fisher said.
Her mom remembered the guy her daughter was talking with regularly on the phone, the guy she considered her best friend.
“Well,” asked Fisher’s mom, “what about Tyson?”
Fruit bowl beginning
More than a year after they’d met at the rodeo, Durfey was beginning to feel antsy. Finally, he asked Fisher if he could fly to Nashville and take her to dinner.
Fisher, thinking of the conversation with her mother, agreed.
The couple’s first date was in August 2011. They walked around Nashville and saw a movie. Durfey was ready to call Fisher his girlfriend, but first she had a stipulation: He’d have to ask her dad’s permission.
At the end of the year, when her parents came to Las Vegas for National Finals Rodeo, Durfey asked — and got the green light.
The two officially dated throughout 2012. Near the end of the year, again at National Finals Rodeo, Durfey asked Fisher’s dad a different question: Would it be OK if he proposed?
On New Year’s Eve in New York City, a horse and carriage carried Durfey and Fisher to Central Park, where he got down on one knee and asked her to marry him. She said yes just a couple of minutes before midnight. Fireworks lit up the New York skyline.
Now, more than four years later, the couple lives in Weatherford and has a 6-month-old daughter, Praise.
Now the whole family comes to the Houston rodeo. Durfey competed as a calf roper again this year and won the semifinals round on Wednesday. Fisher can hardly believe their relationship began here at the fruit bowl.
“I had this mindset of what my husband was going to look like,” she says, “and God brought along Tyson, and he’s more than what I pictured my husband being. I thought he’s going to be 6-4 and he’s going to be an actor. But no, he’s 6 feet and an amazing calf roper.”