The Mary Cabela Story
Mary Cabela helped her husband Dick transform their mail-order fly store into one of the world’s largest outdoor retailers. Today, the mother of nine is using the Cabela Family Foundation to spearhead some of the most ambitious conservation projects on the planet.
By Brad Fitzpatrick
Mary Cabela was born on May 4, 1937 in Casper, Wyoming. That means Miss Mary, as she’s known to those close to her, is 85 years old. You’d scarcely guess that to see her buzzing around Mungari Camp in Mozambique’s Zambeze Delta, though. That day I met with Mary for an interview beside the fire pit in Mungari she’d just completed a project that involved relocating twelve cheetahs from across southern Africa to the delta, expanding this vulnerable big cat’s range and possible distribution by 30 percent worldwide.
That’s no average feat, but it’s exactly the type of ambitious goals Mary and the Cabela Family Foundation have set. Three years ago, the CFF spearheaded the largest conservation-based international lion relocation in the history of Africa, and biologists estimate that by 2050 the descendants of these cats may represent 10 percent of Africa’s entire wild lion population. CCF also supports the Dick and Mary Cabela Sustainable Use Area in New Mexico where Boy Scouts learn outdoor recreation and conservation skills.
Mary Cabela has been a force for conservation and a voice for the positive impact hunters have on wildlife and habitat for decades, but she and her husband of 60 years, Dick Cabela, are best known for their success in the outdoor retail market—a success story that began in a basement in Chappell, Nebraska.
Initial Investment
Dick and Mary Cabela met and began dating in high school. They graduated in May 1955, and were married by November of that year. Dick worked in his family’s furniture business, and scattered around the store were old copies of Field & Stream, Sports Afield, and other outdoor publications. When work was slow, Dick thumbed through the ads and later mentioned to Mary that classified ads must work since they appeared in outdoor magazines time and time again. Inspiration struck.
“Dick traveled to the AFTMA (American Fishing Tackle Manufacturers Association) show in Chicago,” Mary said. “He found a man selling flies in the back of the show, and he bought all his flies for $25.”
The plan was to sell the flies through advertisements in the classified section of sporting magazines, and the first offer from Cabela’s promised five hand-tied flies for 25 cents.
“We got one response to the original ad,” Mary said. “Ernest Lindell of Casper, Wyoming.” She jotted Lindell’s name and address on a recipe card, which she stored in the pantry.
After receiving a lukewarm response to his first ad, Dick decided to change tactics. On his second attempt he promised customers five hand-tied flies for free; they need only to send a quarter for postage and handling. It was the first of many forward-thinking marketing concepts Cabela employed, and it worked. Dick returned to the AFTMA show the following year and purchased bamboo fishing rods, of which he sold seven. Mary collected the names, wrote them on her recipe cards, and stored them alongside the flour and oats in her pantry. Over time, the stack of cards grew larger.
Selling flies and cane poles provided the foundation for what would become a multi-billion-dollar business. In those earliest days, though, Dick and Mary concentrated on collecting names and addresses on those recipe cards, raising children, running a furniture store, keeping the mortgage paid, and making a profit on the goods Dick purchased at AFTMA and other trade shows. Dick’s brother, Jim, who had been working as a bank teller following his time in the military, joined the company, and in 1961 Cabela’s was born.
“It was a perfect partnership,” Mary says with a laugh. “Dick was the yang, Jim was the yin. So, they worked well together.”
Managing two companies while raising a young family was demanding work for two twenty-somethings. Dick and Mary would sometimes hire a babysitter so they could work until two o’clock in the morning in the basement fulfilling orders and building new product catalogs.
“Sometimes Dick wouldn’t even sleep,” Mary told me as we sat by the fire in Mungari Camp under albizia trees draped with lianas. “I don’t know how he’d do it. I’d make him breakfast, and he’d go straight from the basement to the furniture store.”
In its infancy what would become known as Cabela’s was a large stack of Mary’s recipe cards in the pantry, and each person on those cards received a mimeographed sheet with products for sale. Soon thereafter the first Cabela’s catalogs began shipping. From the pantry the business office was relocated first to a shed in Dick and Mary’s backyard and then to the basement of the family furniture store. Next, the company migrated to a vacant American Fence Company store and then to a former American Legion Hall. Dick and Mary knew that at the rate the business was growing they’d need a proper facility that had plenty of room for office space and to store merchandise.
“The John Deere store in Sidney had been sitting empty, and they wanted us to buy it,” Mary told me. They eventually purchased the building for one dollar per square foot, and it became Cabela’s first world headquarters.
“When I saw the first store I thought, ‘I can’t believe this is ours.’”
Mary Cabela is passionate about conservation, but she's also passionate about spreading the message that hunters contribute more to conservation efforts than non-hunters.
Secret of Success
In 1992 the first Cabela’s showroom was built on the interstate outside Sidney. The company’s catalog—once a single mimeograph sheet—was now hundreds of pages in length and distributed to 50 states and over 100 countries.
When I asked Mary what helped to make Cabela’s so successful, she told me that it was about hiring the right people. Cabela’s did hire some of the best talent in the outdoor industry, and many of their former employees remain in the outdoor business today. Spend much time in the outdoor marketplace, and you’ll quickly encounter several of Cabela’s alumni.
Cabela’s was sold in 2017, three years after Dick’s death, but that hasn’t stopped Mary’s involvement in the outdoor industry. After traveling to Africa first in 1989 (Mary had only hunted birds prior; Dick came into their home in 1989 and announced that she needed to learn to shoot a rifle because they were leaving for a Zimbabwean safari in two weeks’ time), she developed a passion for Africa and African wildlife. Her work at the Cabela Family Foundation and Mary’s nine children and dozens of grandchildren keep her busy much of the time.
Mary’s Mission
During the cheetah relocations Mary was accompanied by her sons Dan and Dave, her daughter Carolyn, and Dave and Carolyn’s families. Three generations of the Cabela family gathered together to celebrate a conservation milestone and a legacy built one recipe card at a time.
According to Mary, part of her mission is to not only conserve African wildlife, but to help reduce conflicts with local villagers living with wildlife. Prior to relocating the 24 lions in 2018, officials from the Cabela Family Foundation and Zambeze Delta Safaris explained to local villagers how the lions would be monitored and tracked. Each village had a “virtual fence” constructed that would alert the biologists and the villagers if one of the collared lions ventured close by. Today, the villagers in Coutada 11 receive meat from hunter-harvested trophies (roughly 10 pounds of fresh protein for each family each week, free of charge), harvest rice planted using funds generated by hunters, and have access to a medical clinic. Children in the village attend a school that is fully funded. Hunting and support from the Cabela Family Foundation is turning lives around in Africa and convincing local communities that wildlife is a resource worth saving.
“Dan is the executive director for the foundation, and he comes to me with ideas for projects,” Mary said. “And I always say yes.”
Mary Cabela is passionate about conservation, but she’s also passionate about spreading the message that hunters contribute more to conservation efforts than non-hunters. Since 2018 the Cabela Family Foundation has expanded the population of lions and cheetahs substantially, all while respecting local human populations and promoting their welfare—and they’ve done so with funds raised by the hunting community.
My interview with Mary Cabela ended after 20 minutes. I was scheduled to leave camp the following morning. Mary and her family would spend the next week in Mozambique’s Coutada 11 monitoring the cheetahs before she flew back to the United States. Without stopping at home (Mary had already packed for both trips), she would travel with her family to Alaska to fish, one of the activities she and Dick enjoyed most.
To say that the Cabela’s brand was built from the ground up isn’t completely accurate. Actually, the company started in Dick and Mary’s basement, so seeing the light of day was an improvement. A few hand-tied flies, a classified ad, and a pantry overflowing with hand-written recipe cards were catalysts in the creation one of the world’s largest and most-respected outdoor retailers. Mary Cabela has helped shaped the future of our industry. By overseeing ambitious conservation projects and introducing her own family to the world’s remaining wild places she’s helping secure a future for the wildlife that so inspired her, too.
To play an active role in some of the world’s most ambitious conservation projects visit the Cabela Family Foundation. (cabelafamilyfoundation.org)
