They’re each married to guys who are passionate about duck hunting. Find out how Duck Dynasty stars Kay and Lisa Robertson have made their mother-in-law / daughter-in-law relationship into a friendship that has endured on this episode of The AllMomDoes Podcast with Julie Lyles Carr.
Show Notes:
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Transcription:
Julie [00:00:15] Today on the AllMomDoes podcast, I have a couple of special guests that I can’t wait to introduce you to, and they’re going to help us really unpack deeply what it means to be a great friend. How to find great friends, the importance of that, why we struggle with that sometimes. And these are two women who I think have done a beautiful job helping a lot of people feel like they have a friend. Even if it’s just through the screen. I have today, Ms. Kay and Lisa Robertson from the Duck Dynasty. Yes. We have the matriarch and her daughter in law in the house. Thanks so much for being with me today.
Kay [00:00:50] We’re happy to be here.
Lisa [00:00:51] And I say that I’m the original daughter in law. So you have the matriarch and the original daughter in law.
Kay [00:00:57] The first.
Julie [00:00:58] I think that’s an important distinction. Absolutely. My mother would always tell my husband that he was her favorite son in law. Now, Lisa, he was her only son in law. And I don’t think that’s really the important thing here, Right? So we have the original and the matriarch. Let’s make sure that we get that in there. So the two of you have been cohorts for a long time. How long have you been in each other’s lives?
Lisa [00:01:21] Close to 40 years.
Kay [00:01:23] Long time.
Julie [00:01:24] Wow. That’s amazing. And let me ask you this. Do you consider each other friends at this point?
Kay [00:01:29] Oh, best friends. Best friends.
Julie [00:01:32] I love that. I love that. Because a lot of times in law, relationships, we don’t think about that friendship might be one of the things that we want to find there. We think about our in-law families and how we hope that will operate and maybe the kind of grandparents we want our in-laws to be, But we don’t think about the friendship factor. How is it for the two of you beginning to develop friendship in this in-law relationship?
Kay [00:01:55] I’ve always been the mother in law, and I think Lisa will tell you this for sure, that have not just stood up for my boys because I’ll stand up and say they’re wrong and the daughter in law’s are right. You know, whoever in that situation, sometimes it might be a daughter in law, but I’m not the one they’ll say my boys are right when they’re not right. But I do know a lot of people that do that. But I know my boys know I won’t do it. So I think that makes my daughter in laws I hope love me more.
Julie [00:02:27] That’s beautiful.
Lisa [00:02:28] Yeah.
Julie [00:02:29] Absolutely. And really does introduce true friendship because a friend is somebody who will step in and say, “Wait a minute, wait a minute.” Regardless of where maybe familial loyalties lie, here’s how I really see it. So I think that’s a really important thing to note. Lisa, how has it been for you in walking in this 40 year friendship with Ms. Kay?
Lisa [00:02:49] Well, whenever I came into the family, I did not have a very close relationship with my mom. And so whenever I came in to the Robertson family, then Ms. Kay took me under her wing. She taught me how to cook. She taught me how to take care of my children, how to be a good wife. And so she’s the one that actually taught me about being a Christian wife, a Christian mom, a Christian sister. And a lot of that was just not me sitting at her feet, just me being around her and in her life. And I saw it from her example.
Julie [00:03:32] Right. You know, I think that that place of mentoring relationships is really interesting in our faith communities right now. I know that for myself, when I was working more specifically in women’s ministry, I tried real hard to create mentor programs. And I got to tell you, sometimes the mentoring thing, it’s hard to make it programmatic. It’s hard to say, Oh, we’re going to match you and match you, and there’s going to be this thing that blossoms from it. How do you think we can go about looking around at the people who are around us and saying, you know, that might be somebody I could learn something from and being proactive in that? Instead of sort of waiting for somebody to come to us, how can we go seek that in areas of our life where we need some help? Because to Lisa, to your point, there are so many layers to being a wife, a mom, a businesswoman, all these things. And we don’t always walk into our adult years having any clue what we’re supposed to do. And that’s supposed to look like.
Lisa [00:04:30] Well, we have a ministry at church and it’s called Heartfelt. It used to be called Heart to Home, but now it’s called Heartfelt. And one of my best friends is the one that came up with this. And what we do is we take older women and they will, you know, three or four women, they will host a group of women for a year and they come into their house, they cook for them. They teach them about the Bible. They teach them about being a wife and a mom. Because sometimes what a woman needs, what a younger woman needs is she just has a question and there’s nobody to ask. And so they come into these groups. And that’s the kind of things that we talk about is like parenting. Also, the relationship with your husband or the relationship with your mother in law, you know, your in-laws or anything like that. And for us, I think that that helps these women to know that one night a month they’ve got somebody that they can talk to kind of one on one. But they also know that any time during the month that they have a problem, all they have to do is to call one of their heart moms. So we called them Heart Moms and we call the younger women Heart Sisters. My friend started that. But I just believe it’s really important for us to seek people out. Even if it’s older people that we need to learn something from. Or if it’s people that are younger than us or the same age as us, that we could help to be an example to. Because all we’re trying to do is to help as many people get to heaven as possible.
Julie [00:06:23] Right. You know, Lisa, you and Ms. Kay both, you’ve done a lot of work with women. This is part of the passion that you have. And one of the things that you’ve really seen bubble up that you’re wanting to address is women struggling to find a place to be able to speak with what you call their true voices, to be able to build genuine sisterhood and to be able to do that in such a way that it continues to help them in their faith journeys. What are some of the top needs that you’re noticing for women as you work with women? And Ms. Kay, you work a lot with a specialized group that you were telling me about before the interview. Women who are in recovery. Lisa, you’ve been working with women who are also looking for that connection in that place of being able to create greater community. What are some of the top needs you’re seeing with women today, even within these specialized niches? Because I think there are just so many needs. I know for myself, I have a lot of women in my world who really are struggling to make and maintain friendships that are life giving. What are you two seeing?
Kay [00:07:27] We have seen so many different ones. And see I’m an overly friendly person. You can just tell that, can’t you, by talking to me because I talk so much sometimes they tell me, Ms. Kay, you know, because I’ve over talked the whole segment, you know? So I think that the greatest thing, like Lisa is talking about small groups. I’ve had small groups when they weren’t officially small groups and because Phil and I for 20 years we had a house church on Sunday night at our home and we had during the week what we called a Bible talk where we’d have a lot of especially new Christians in, and we would really have to teach like the women and the men. They just were immature. And a lot of times what I look for, just like we’re in a little church planning by the big church that she goes to that Alan preaches at a lot. We’re in a little one. So what I do every week is just scan our audience and I see people I have not seen. I see women sitting alone. I see women alone with their children and that I might not have seen the week before. And so here I go to meet them and talk to them. And, you know, before it’s over, I’m just right up in their face because that’s what I do. And had my arm around them and just say, “Look, I’ve been through hard times. If you hear my last story, you will probably cry. But you know what? Look where we are now. That’s what God can do.” And I had a note written to me all the time in church and just some horrible things that that they’re just left their husband, not even their husband, but the father of their child has just left. And there they are alone and trying to maneuver and get around and carry on when inside they don’t, but they have those children there. So, yes, I just find them. And then I tell them, I said, “This is small group. I know maybe you’re not even used to coming to church. But what you need to understand is people that come here are like you. They need help. And there’s a lot of a few, not a lot. A few older women, older man, my husband that we can talk to. And we’ve been through this rough life and you’ve got to have friends, good friends. And if you’re walking out of a bad life, the first thing they will tell you. Alan, Phil, any of them when they’re preaching to them and talking to them to come to Christ, you have to just sweep out the boys and girls and your friends that are not good for you, that are leading you the wrong way. And you have to walk in the light. And that means new friends.” And I tell you, I’ll tell them I know somebody that would you would like. And you just try to match them up or I do. And a lot of times they find each other. And I’ll say, she had the same problem you had. Her husband just walked out. And then they see somebody they can identify with and think, oh, she made it. She looks so together and see what I mean? I don’t know, I can’t help but do it and it’s needed. And I’ll tell you something else. If I could put small groups in every church in America, we would be so much better. So much better.
Julie [00:10:54] You touch on something that I think I agree. And I think that you touched on something that’s so important that I think we’ve lost the wisdom of it through the years, which is multigenerational friendships. What I see represented with you, Ms. Kay, and your daughter in law, Lisa, when I married into my in-law family, one of my very best friends became my husband’s grandmother. And she was a good 55 years older than me. And I’m telling you, I learned so much from that woman. And it redefined my understanding of friendship, because so often, including in our faith communities, we are looking for people who are in the exact same stage of life that we’re in, which has value. We all need those people we can lean on. When you’re like, “Listen, my teenagers are making me crazy.” And they can go, “Listen, Mine too” and I can talk about that and commiserate. But we need those people who are just a little bit further ahead of us and then those who are a little bit further ahead of them and ahead of them. And I think we need the people coming up behind us, too, because what’s the statement that the way that you master something, the way you really learn it is to teach it. And so the ability to speak into those who are coming into the stages that maybe we’re exiting, it’s such a beautiful piece of wisdom Ms. Kay that I think that we’ve lost. Lisa, how do we begin to expand our understanding of who we should be looking for when it comes to friendships? How do we release some of this that, “Oh, it’s got to be somebody that’s exactly like me or the exact same age.” How do we let go of some of that and start thinking bigger when it comes to who were cultivating and friendship?
Lisa [00:12:27] Well, I think one of those ways is whenever you read in scripture. A lot of people have had a lot of different problems. You know, there’s nothing new under the sun, you know, and and so there’s always someone in your church, in your community that’s been through exactly the same things that you have been through. And they’ve made it. And those are the people that we need to look for. We need to ask about, you know, hey do you know anybody, you know, that this has ever happened to, you know, and they’ve really made it out and they’ve really got to the other side of it? We need to ask other people like, you know, our leaders in our church, who is someone that can mentor me, that can help me through this spot, this rough patch in my life with my husband, with my kids, with my in-laws, with my job, anything like that. Who is someone in our church, in our community of believers that could help me through that? And, you know, usually the leaders of the church know a lot of different women that could help that. I think during the day and here’s what I think. I think during the pandemic, it sent everybody home. And everybody was so afraid. And I get that, you know, there was people dying all around us. So I understand the fear. But at the same time, it also gave some folks a reason not to communicate with other people, not to be around other people, not to share their struggles, their victories. And I think they just got used to it. And I think that now they don’t want to do that, you know, because then it opens them back up again. And you got to talk about it. But I’m telling you, without someone to help you through those rough patches, those rough patches are coming back again and you’re going to be back in the same situation. And so we’ve got to meet that sin head on. We’ve got to talk about it. We’ve got to be open. A lot of people think and I’m very open when I share my testimony. People are like, “Wow, I mean, that was so brave. That was, you know, I can’t believe that you said all those things.” I say those things to give people hope and to tell people, Look. There are people out there that have been through exactly the same thing you have. And so I want you to know that I made it through so you can make it through. Same thing with Ms. Kay. When Ms. Kay tells her story of, you know, Phil being a horrible person for the first ten years that they were together. People understand that. Women understand. And they’re like, “Whoa.” I mean, they were on a TV show. We had no idea, you know? But everybody has struggles. Everybody has a story. And we’ve got to tell our stories and we’ve got to seek out people who can help us tell our story to one, to get past it, but also to tell our story.
Julie [00:15:54] Right, Right. And get it out there. Ms. Kay, how do we get to the place where we can become vulnerable again? Because to Lisa’s point, I can just hear some listeners who are like, listen, I tried explaining what was going on in my heart. I tried confessing a sin thing I was dealing with. I tried that and I got burned. Somebody just took it. Gossiped with it. Went a different direction. Judged me for it. How can we do the evaluation to make sure that we’re staying in a posture of being open? And at the same time, we’re wise in who we are choosing to disclose to and who we are processing with. Because there are those people, like Lisa said, who just cut off and they don’t want to be vulnerable anymore. Then they’re those people who are…They’ve really tried and it hasn’t worked well, How do we do that, Ms. Kay? How do we really evaluate who we should be trusting? How do we put them through some traps to make sure that we know?
Kay [00:16:50] Start by reading the Word of God. You need to be familiar with God’s Word. And also when you pray, you must trust Him. And if you say, “God, lead me, lead me.” And maybe, like some of the people I went through, and it is true. Like I can remember a certain friend and and so many things I liked about her, except she was too nosey. I don’t know how to say that. But we have find because we were a family, a famous family, because we were on TV. Now we’re not any different than anybody else. But also, you know, things that I would only tell to Lisa or any of my daughter, I don’t tell that to somebody else. And I don’t want you trying to get it out of me about some things in our life. And I’m telling you, we’re is open. And Lisa talked about sharing her testimony, and I share mine and the others do. But my case and in my case, it was Phil that was the bad person. But I was just as lost as he was. But because I had listened to so much of God’s Word from my grandmother, which is a whole nother story, I’d like to take it sometime. But she put that in me. That did it make me perfect? No. Did it help me in my struggles? Yes, it did. Because of her words coming back to a little girl that said on a swing, swaying and swaying with her grandma right beside her, telling her words, telling her stories that did. But in my case, it’s really hard sometimes when you do have to maybe kind of slip, be away from somebody who is not. You know, they’re just not following God and they’re not good with keeping their mouths shut when they should and sometimes say, “Well, who does she think she is?” I’m just follow and serve to serve God. And I don’t ever mean to be cruel or hurt in any way, but sometime you ask too much. Are you want me to reveal things that shouldn’t be revealed? And I must step away. And I’ll do that in as much love as I can. But that is sometimes necessary.
Julie [00:19:08] Right? You know, I think we also have to think about being the kind of friend who won’t.
Kay [00:19:12] That’s right.
Julie [00:19:12] Right. I mean, we do have this culture that is oversharing in a lot of ways, and then we can tend to overshare as friends.
Lisa [00:19:20] You know, a lot of people will say to me, “If I tried to share that, do you know what what people would say about me? Do you know that people would, you know, think ill of me?” But here’s my thing. Whenever somebody tells me that, I’m like, “But are those people getting you to heaven? Did those people give you eternal life?” No. The only person that it matters what they think of you is Jesus Christ Himself. He’s the one that died on the cross for us. These other people didn’t. You know, the people that you’re that you’re afraid to share with, tell your story. Because every time you tell your story, it helps to open up for somebody else. But I know that people lost their voice, you know? I’m thinking of the woman at the well. So the woman at the well was at the well at high noon. A time that you don’t go to the well because it’s hot and you’ve got to carry your water all the way back. But she was there because she did not want to be around other people because of her lifestyle. She had lost her voice. That was all there was to it. She couldn’t talk to anybody because of the sin that was in her life. She has an encounter with Jesus Christ. I had an encounter with Jesus Christ. Kay had an encounter with Jesus Christ. We can’t keep our mouth shut. This woman leaves that well, goes into town and does not care what anybody thinks. She goes into town and she tells her story about the man she met at the well. So what I’m saying is that. We need to share our story and we need to gain that voice back. Because I have a voice now. My voice is for marriage. My voice is for my family. It’s for the unborn. I was just reading in Proverbs 31, we were doing an event this past weekend, and I’ve read Proverbs 31 a thousand times because it’s one of my favorite ones. In verse eight, I believe it was, it says, speak up for those who have no voice. That’s what I do. I do that for the unborn. And I just noticed that verse. But that’s just it. God opens up your mind. He opens up doorways whenever you look at His Word and you read His Word, you might read something 12 times, and the next time you read it, He’s opening up something else. So we’ve got to share our story, find our voice.
Julie [00:22:10] Right. I love that you distinguish that. I think sometimes we think about finding our voice as this place of saying, “Let me tell you who I am and why I’m amazing.” And that is valid. I think there are times that we need that place of understanding our own worth. But I love that you’re starting at the place of saying, you know, really to find our truest voice. It’s the ability to say, these are the places that I was a mess and these are the places that God elevated me out of that because that to me is really more stereophonic, right? I think sometimes a a mono channel is us just saying I’m good and I’m going to be fine and God loves me, which is a powerful we need that message. But also this other line that says, Here’s where I’ve been and here’s where God is taking me. It makes me want to ask the question, because this new book that you have coming out called Sister Roar, I want to hear about where this title came from because it is a really compelling title.
Lisa [00:23:03] Well, it actually came from one of the guys that came in who was helping Phil write a book. And so we were just talking and telling him what what we wanted in, you know, in the book. And so we’re all just sitting there and thinking and we knew it needed to have something about sister in it. You know, telling our story and that kind of stuff. And so we’re all just sitting there thinking, brainstorm and throwing out, you know, just titles that we might could do. And he said, “What about Sister Roar?” And we were like, That sounds really good. And the only thing that I could think of was like a lioness, you know? Now, when she roars, it’s ferocious. But a lot of times it’s to tell people where she is, to tell her cubs, to tell them where she is. It is to protect her cubs. Whenever there’s, you know, something come along, a predator or something. It is to tell other lions this, we’re over here, you know, this is where we are. So come over here where we are. I mean, you have different voices for different things. In a roar. When we say roar, we’re not talking about. Just a hollerin, you know, let’s just get outside and holler. You know how people do on the city streets and stuff. That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about you find what Satan took from you. And with God’s help, you pull that back and you say, “No, I will not be silenced on this. I will share what I need to share.” And so, I mean, that’s kind of where the title came from. Whenever he said it, we both looked at each other, were like, I like that, you know? And the more we’ve talked about it, the more we’ve, like, resonated.
Kay [00:25:00] It’s different.
Julie [00:25:01] It is. I love it because I think a lot of times we think of raw as being the provenance of a lion. Yeah. But you’re so right. I mean, lioness is also roar. And I think that I just really I love the connection of these two terms that we just typically don’t see together. I think it’s a fantastic title. Ms. Kay, talk to me a little bit about who we need to be to be good friends to others. We talked about some of the things that we want to look for in friendship. We’ve talked about needing to be thoughtful and who were disclosing too, but also not allowing it to silence us. But, you know, I find a lot, Ms. Kay, that women struggle sometimes to even understand what a good friend looks like in terms of how they should be. There’s expectation about what we want to receive as a friend. But I don’t know that we always know how to be a good friend. What are some of the things that you want to encourage women to think about?
Kay [00:25:51] The Robertsons have no trouble telling anything in our past, and one girl said, “Well, what if you’ve not shared everything and like you’ve got a deep, dark secret?” And I always tell the same thing. If you find that out and prove it to me, because my memories going as I age you know that? And you find something. And then I’ll tell you one thing. Tell us about it. And then in our next book or our next show, we’ll tell you about it, the ones that didn’t hear it. So I’m real good about trying to say I’m very open and hoping that as they feel comfortable with me, that they will open up to me. But I don’t push that. I don’t try to make them act like me. But I have so many different friends. You would be shocked. And you know, every color, every age, every from other countries, and it would surprise you. But the thing is that the really common bond that in all our friendships is that we all love God and some are stronger in the faith or have been in the face longer and some are brand new and they want to know, how do you try to be good? I said, “You’re never perfect. But you see, when Jesus died on the cross, His blood made us perfect.” But it doesn’t mean that every day of our life we shouldn’t try to be better. And I guess I have friends that I just pour into. I have some that I’m scared to preach too much to because I’ll scare them to death. And I just kind of love on them, if you know what I mean, And tell them things about I think that are lovely about their children. And sometime I tell them things they might need to work on as a parent. I said, I had four boys. Now, I was always just dying to have that little girl that I could dress up. Well, I didn’t have her. She came in the way of grandchildren. But you know what? Four boys and raising them. It was a story in and of itself. And each of them have things. And like many them come from, they’ve been divorced several times, or they have had things that have been horrific that happened to them. Some are just like, so scared, so scared to just share. And I guess I try to make them feel loved and try to show them that God’s church, we’re the people. It’s not the building, it’s us that are the church. And we love and everybody there has had confessed to Him most of them that are you know have become Christians and they have said, I’m going to follow Jesus, but I don’t know how? And so you tell the new friends, say, and this is what we try to tell him and this is how we do. And they’ll say, “Well, I don’t want to be like that.” And I love them because I say, “All He requires love, God with all your heart, mind, and soul and love one another.” Okay, some people have this thing is I don’t have to go. I don’t have to meet at the church. Fine. Where are you gonna find your people you’re going to love one another? Okay, You say. “Well, I love them all at my work.” Well, I want to go follow them. But you say what I’m talking about. They try to tell me, “Oh, I can sit totally alone at my house because I don’t work. I’m retired.” And I said, “No, you can’t love one another. How do you do that?” But see, my friends, they know I love them. I know they love me. How do I find them? I tell you from anywhere and everywhere. But some people I know aren’t as friendly as I am or outgoing. So on those, you try not to scare them to death and you just show them love. You just said, “I’ll help you, I’ll do this.”
Julie [00:29:57] And I think that’s so important to be willing to customize where people are at. I hear you saying that a good friend is someone who is not trying to say, “Oh, you got to measure here and you got to be ready for this and you got to be ready for it all in one big dose.” That it’s a willingness to let people show you who they are, to love them right where they are, and then to hopefully walk in, step with them further into the faith, but not to take people in as friends expecting that they have to be all of this. Well, Lisa and Ms. Kay, this has been so fun to get to have time with you. I’m so excited for you on this project, Sister Roar. Where can listeners go to find you guys on social media? Find out more about the book and how to be intentional about building their own communities and both pouring into those communities and receiving?
Lisa [00:30:40] Alan and I have, and I just went blank a website, sorry, we have a website and it’s AlandLisaRobertson.com and we have lots of blogs on there. Whenever Sister Roar comes out you’ll be able to go to a link on there. But right now you can preorder through Amazon and it’s just Sister Roar by Kay and Lisa Robertson. I have a Facebook. Mine’s just Lisa Robertson. Kay has a Facebook. Ms. Kay Robertson, I believe is what hers is. Somebody else takes care of her. She doesn’t take care of it.
Kay [00:31:20] I’m getting old. She just got it.
Lisa [00:31:26] That’s right. And all of our events and stuff that Al and I do will be on that website. And, you know, anybody is welcome to email us and we can tell them, you know, how to get in touch with Ms. Kay or how to get in touch with Phil or I mean, you know, they can come through us because neither one of them has, you know, an email or anything. But we have also loved being together to do this project and being able to do interviews together. Because, you know, I look at us as as Naomi and Ruth. And I want to go wherever she goes. You know, her people are my people. And I’ll stand right beside her until the end and, you know, do whatever needs to be done. But, I want to encourage, you know, women get out of the house now. You know, the scare is over. Get out there and mingle with one another and allow other people to help carry those burdens that you have.
Kay [00:32:42] In all the years. I have never had a fight or a big rift with my daughter in laws. Now I know they’re not going to believe me, but God knows it’s true. And, you know, it takes two people to have a fight. And if anything, it’s kind of, you know, different then, what I suggest is everybody be quiet and don’t talk to we pray and think about it or whatever. And, you know, it’s really worked. And if you want to question like I want to question what they’re doing or any of my daughter in laws, I’m just honest and I say it. Now, they’d say, “Why do you think I spent too much.” I say, “I know, because I did it myself.” You know, I’m telling them, “Be careful because I’ve been there.” You see what I mean? And we have really worked out.
Julie [00:33:32] Right.
Lisa [00:33:32] She still training after all these years.
Julie [00:33:34] Love that.
Kay [00:33:36] A guy can help you do that too.
Julie [00:33:39] I love that. Well, we will get all those links in the show notes. Rebecca puts those together for us each and every week. And wow, just such an inspiration to see this multi-generational friendship, passion, camaraderie, and the incredible things that you have to teach all of us. Sister Roar, can’t wait to see it. What a great title. And Lisa and Ms. Kay Robertson, thank you so much for being with me today.
Kay [00:34:02] Thank you.
