He founded the duck-call business that became the foundation of his family’s reality television empire.
Phil Robertson, the patriarch of the hit show “Duck Dynasty” and the founder of the duck hunting gear business that became the foundation of his family’s reality television empire, died on Sunday. He was 79.
His death was announced by his son Jase Robertson in a social media post late Sunday. The post did not say where he died or specify a cause.
Jase Robertson said last year on the family’s podcast, “Unashamed with the Robertson Family,” that his father had early-stage Alzheimer’s disease and other health problems.
Mr. Robertson was one of the stars of “Duck Dynasty,” an A&E series that starred his family — Mr. Robertson and his wife, Kay; their sons; the sons’ wives; an uncle; and some grandchildren — and revolved around their business making and selling duck hunting gear.
Mr. Robertson was born on April 24, 1946, in Vivian, a rural town in the northwestern corner of Louisiana. He was one of seven children.
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He attended Louisiana Tech University on a football scholarship and, after receiving his bachelor’s degree in physical education and a master’s in education, spent several years teaching in Louisiana schools.
A duck-hunting aficionado, Mr. Robertson was unsatisfied with the existing duck calls on the market and set out to craft his own. In 1972, he whittled what would become the signature product of his company, Duck Commander, which he founded the next year.
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Mr. Robertson, flanked by his sons Jase and Willie, in an episode of “Duck Dynasty.”Credit…Zach Dilgard/A&E
Mr. Robertson was initially opposed to the idea of a television show, his son Willie told The New York Times in 2013. “He said, ‘I’m already as famous as I want to be.’” Willie Robertson said. “I explained to him, ‘Phil, this can expand your platform to talk about the things you like to talk about,’” including his Christian faith and his conservative politics.
“Duck Dynasty,” which ran over 11 seasons from 2012 to 2017, was once ranked among the most popular shows on cable, and at its height had as many as 12 million viewers. It was loosely centered on the Duck Commander business, run by Willie, Mr. Robertson’s third son with his wife, Kay. It drew fans for its idiosyncratic humor, the characters’ offbeat antics and the way the family was able to mine self-deprecating wisdom from the redneck caricature.
Reviewing “Duck Dynasty” for The Times in 2012, Neil Genzlinger called it “a cut above the rest” of the reality shows then on the air and noted that the Robertsons were “as good at being television stars as they are at making duck calls.”
The Robertson family was notably one of the first in the reality television industry to openly admit that their show was staged. They described it as “guided reality,” in which producers would often sketch out the parameters of a situation and have the family live it. That helped the show solidify the idea that distinguishing between real and fake isn’t that important in reality television.
The success of “Duck Dynasty” extended beyond television — although not always for long. In 2014 it was announced that “The Duck Commander Family Musical,” with actors playing members of the Robertson family, would open in Las Vegas. It did, the following April, but it closed after a little more than a month.
“Duck Dynasty” occasionally courted controversy. In 2013, Mr. Robertson was briefly suspended from the show after an interview surfaced in which he made statements that were widely seen as offensive to gay people and suggested that Black people had been happier during the Jim Crow era.
But the network quickly reinstated him under pressure from fans, and after the family issued a statement saying in effect that there would be no show without their patriarch — and arguing that while his comments might have been coarse, they were grounded in his belief in the Bible.
Last year, Jase Robertson said on the family’s podcast that his father had early-stage Alzheimer’s. “Phil’s not doing well,” he said, adding that Mr. Robertson also had a “blood disease causing all kinds of problems.”
Mr. Robertson’s survivors include his wife; his sons, Alan, Jase, Jep and Willie; and several grandchildren.