Pinning Bob Phillips down long enough to do an interview and take photographs is like trying to catch a jackrabbit in an open pasture. The 35-year host of the syndicated TV program Texas Country Reporter is always on the move.

You can’t do a show about traveling the back roads of Texas while sitting in an office. At least, you can’t do it well. And Phillips and his crew of producers and photographers have done it well enough to make Texas Country Reporter the longest-running syndicated television program in broadcast history.
 

“It’s a dream job,” Phillips says in the unmistakable baritone voice that is a perfect conduit for storytelling. “What I do for a living most people do on the weekends or just sit at home and think about doing. I drive around the state, meet the characters that make Texas unique and then I get to tell their stories on television. It’s not brain surgery, but it is very rewarding.”

Based in Beaumont, Texas, with wife, Kelli, and two stepsons, Charlie and Dylan, Phillips travels more than 100,000 miles a year to chronicle the lives and attitudes of the people in the Lone Star State. With pit stops at his high-rise apartment in Dallas and trips to check on the Escondida resort and spa he created near Medina, Texas, he doesn’t know how to answer when you ask where he lives. He just smiles and asks back, “What day is it?”

In His Downtime

Believe it or not, Phillips does manage to work in a few hours of free time here and there. And what does this man-on-the-move do to relax? Well, when he is not at a Little League baseball or school basketball game where Charlie and Dylan are all-stars, this road warrior likes to cook.

“I’ve cooked for as long as I can remember,” Phillips says. “It’s something I never really worked that hard at. It just came naturally.”

It’s rare when Bob and Kelli are both in Dallas for the weekend. The high-rise apartment kitchen is much smaller that the sprawling commercial kitchen at his Escondida resort, but Phillips knows his way around both.

He and his wife are both chefs of a sort. “Gourmet” is a little too high brow for their homegrown tastes, but they can both whip up a dinner that rivals dishes on the priciest of menus.

When asked who is the best cook they each point to the other. “We like to work together in the kitchen and experiment with different ingredients and tastes,” Bob says while stirring a dish he and Kelli call Rattlesnake Pasta.

“No, it doesn’t have rattlesnake in it. It is shrimp and crab, but the red pepper gives it a bite,” Kelli points out with a smile.
 
While his wife usually cooks for the family and small groups, Phillips likes to feed the masses. He’s cooked Thanksgiving dinner for the last couple of years for 40 or more guests at Escondida, and he is the featured chef there several times throughout the year. Phillips also cooks dinner at family gatherings and employee functions.

“In the kitchen I can really relax and not think about the pressures of traveling and running a company. Some people stress out in the kitchen, but for me, it’s one of my sanctuaries,” Phillips says.

On the Road Again

Phillips’ typical week starts on Monday at his Beaumont home with Kelli and the boys. Blonde, vibrant and energetic, the fairer Phillips is also a television personality. She anchors the evening news at KFDM channel 6 in Beaumont. After she heads off to work around 2 p.m., Phillips hits the road for the five-hour drive toward Dallas, where his 10-person production company is based.

Along the way, he stops in Waco and spends the night in a hotel. His TV crew will come down from Dallas in the morning to videotape a story on the World Hunger Relief farm—an all-volunteer operation of young farmers wanting to learn farming techniques in order to take their knowledge abroad as missionaries and relief workers.

In the earliest of morning light, Phillips prowls the fields of broccoli and cabbage asking questions of the idealistic twenty-somethings who are hoping to change the world. “Why do you want to do this?” Phillips asks, and then he listens to answers about the rewards of farming and feeding people.

“Why?” provides the focus of the stories Phillips tells. “We usually are not too concerned with the ‘what, when and how’ when it comes to our storytelling. I want to know why people do the things they do,” Phillips explains.

Around lunchtime, Phillips leaves the farm and the story in the hands of producer Jason Anderson and photographer Dan Sticklin, who will stay on location for a few more hours to finish up. Phillips heads to Dallas to catch up on business in his downtown office. His Dallas apartment overlooks the skyline, but it’s a view he rarely gets to enjoy.

During the next two days, Phillips drives to desolate west Texas for a story on how towns such as Blackwell and Trent are springing back to new economic life due to revenue from the wind turbines popping up like weeds on the prairie. Then he heads back east to Fort Worth, where he’ll film a commercial for First Ag Credit, one of his show’s longtime sponsors.

“My life is a whirlwind of airplanes, automobiles and taxis,” Phillips says before taking one of the dozens of phone calls he receives on his ever-present cell phone. “I have to take advantage of every hour of every day.”

When the final scenes of the commercial are complete, Phillips thanks his film crew, climbs into his Land Rover and drives south to check in on Escondida. “I call it the 15-hour triangle. Dallas. Beaumont. Medina. It’s five hours between any two of them, and I try to touch base at all three nearly every week,” Phillips says.

For now, there’s a television crew waiting for him up in the Texas panhandle—tomorrow will bring another day, another story to be told. 
 

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Looking for the Rattlesnake Pasta and Key Lime Pie recipes mentioned in our magazine? See them here.