 |
| ROUGH RIDER: KBA Group’s Larry King with his trusty steed, Lil’ Bita Dynamite. photography by Kevin Hunter Marple |
During the week, Larry King looks like any of the other mild-mannered CPAs at KBA Group LLP, the Dallas-based accounting firm he founded in 1982. “When all the other kids wanted to be firemen and policemen, I was going to be an accountant,” says King, whose father and grandfather were both CPAs in his homestate of New York. Come Saturday, though, the 52-year-old managing partner trades his shirt and tie for boots and spurs to participate in area reining competitions. “I call myself Jekyll and Hyde sometimes,” he says, laughing. Reining is a Western-style horseback riding event that is judged on the ability of the rider to guide his horse with ease through a series of spins, circles, and sliding stops. King picked up the sport nine years ago before finding the Trigger to his Roy Rogers in Lil’ Bita Dynamite, a horse being kept at his 25-acre Legacy Ranch in Pilot Point, where he and his wife, Karen, and their 9-year-old son, Braden, breed and train reining horses. In the year and a half King and his equestrian equivalent have competed together, the pair have snagged first-place finishes in five major events—more than enough to be able to call himself a “reining champ.”