The high school sweethearts started dating when Kay was just 14 and got married in 1966 when she was 16. They were practically an old married couple when Phil attended Louisiana Tech on a football scholarship; he even started ahead of the now-legendary Terry Bradshaw and turned down an offer to play in the NFL to concentrate on duck hunting.
"They had me there when they first got to Tech, so he was also a little different than the modern athlete," their oldest son, Alan, told ESPN. (Alan is a minister who is not on "Duck Dynasty.")
"He already had a family at that young of an age. I think that hunting, some of it was just providing for us. So I think that changed a bit of his attitude and allowed him to walk away a little bit easier, you know."
Phil and Kay's love story hasn't always been happy, though. In the '70s, Phil was "headed south" -- running a bar, drinking, getting into fights. In his autobiography, "The Duck Commander Family," son Willie recounts how Phil kicked out his family in a drunken rage, then begged Kay to come back.
"What kept me there? What made me stay with him? It was words my grandmother said: 'One man, one wife, for one life,'" she told Sports Spectrum.
Phil turned to religion to change his life, and Kay forgave him. They're still together more than 45 years later!