Ryan Sutter

Ryan Sutter's name is usually connected with a reality TV show, but before the phrase "Trista and Ryan" became a household phrase, Ryan was a Vail firefighter who grew up in Fort Collins, played football at the University of Colorado as a walk on and was drafted by the Baltimore Ravens. His NFL career didn't last very long, in fact on the field it was just a few seconds of a regular season game and jumping around to a few teams. Ryan also played in NFL Europe before calling it quits and becoming a fire fighter in Vail. Then the rest of his story began as a friend volunteered his name to be a contestant on a new show called the Bachelorette. He had no interest in being on a reality TV show, but went to Los Angeles anyway. Turns out he was the last one standing and married Trista in a lavish made-for-TV wedding. Today Ryan is a Denver firefighter, he and Trista are navigating raising two teenagers and are still getting pulled back into reality TV appearances here and there. 

To learn more about the host Susie Wargin, visit www.SusieWargin.com

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
For me.

Speaker 2 (00:00):
You know, you're just growing up, you're playing football for fun,
and you're you know, not recruited out of high school
and all this sort of stuff happens, and then you
finally get this chance where you're kind of like, yeah,
I told you, you know, I told you I could
do it, and that's a cool feeling. Unfortunately didn't last
all that long, but at least, right, you know, you
get there and you get to have that brief experience

(00:20):
in my case, but that's very hard. You know, you
get a knock on your door at like six in
the morning and they're like, hey, coach, need to see you.
Bring your playbook and you obviously know what that means.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
And then you just turn it in and you're like
what now.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
Welcome to Cut, Traded, Fired, Retired, a podcast featuring conversations
with professional athletes and coaches who have experienced being cut, traded, fired,
and or they're retired. I'm your host, Susie Wargen. This
episode's guest is usually thought of in connection with the
reality TV show, but Ryan Sutter has plenty of ties
to Colorado and sports. Ryan grew up in Fort Collins

(00:53):
and played football at the University of Colorado as a
walk on. He ended up setting a multitude of records,
many of which stand today. He was drafted by the
Ravens in nineteen ninety eight, but unfortunately, his pro career
didn't last long. In fact, on the field, it was
just a few seconds of a regular season game before
an injury put him out of commission. Ryan would bounce
around to a few teams and also played in NFL

(01:14):
Europe before calling it quits and becoming a firefighter in Veil.
Then the rest of his story began. A friend volunteered
him to be a contestant on the Bachelorette, which he
had no interest in doing, but went anyway. Turns out
Ryan was the last one standing, and the words Trista
and Ryan became a household phrase. Today. Ryan is still
a firefighter now in Denver, and he and Trista are

(01:36):
in the Denver area, raising their two teenagers and still
getting roped back into reality TV appearances. Here and there,
Ladies and gentlemen, Ryan Sutter.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
Cut Traded Fired Retired podcast with Susie Wargin.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
Hello, Ryan Sutter, How are you?

Speaker 1 (01:53):
I'm good? How are you?

Speaker 3 (01:54):
I'm good? It's good to have you here. We've been
trying to kind of figure this out for a little while.
You're pretty busy.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Yeah, I mean I pretend to be busy show.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
Oh I don't think that's true. You're busy. But you
have a cool story. Most people know you for TV
and The Bachelorette, but you've got a professional sports story
and a very homegrown story before that too, with sports,
which I think not a lot of people talk about.
And I think that's a great experience to use for others.

(02:22):
And now you use it for your kids too, which
I think is pretty amazing. So you're born in Fort Collins.
I was no co guy.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah I was. Yeah, I haven't been back for what
we had to go back for?

Speaker 3 (02:32):
What?

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Did we go back for a hockey tournament or something
a few years ago and we drove by our old house,
and I mean the town.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
Has changed quite a bit.

Speaker 3 (02:38):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
Yeah, been there. But I loved growing up in four Collins.

Speaker 3 (02:42):
Yeah, you go to Four Collins High School. You obviously
played football, but what other sports were you into growing up?

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Well, I'm from the old school way of sports where
you just played all the sports. So we go football
was the fall sport, and then we played that transition
into basketball. I played baseball for a little while and
stopped playing that in high school and started running track.
Not because I was good at track, but I was
trying to get faster for football.

Speaker 3 (03:06):
Ah, okay, so I did that didn't help.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
It did? Yeah, it turns out like technique, and.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
Again a good reason for doing multi sports, right.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yes, I know, And it's a hard that's a hard
thing to impart on your kids, like are my son
who loves hockey, especially hockey, where that's a pretty specific
movement and you want him to do some other things
so he doesn't get poor. Hockey players get lots of
hip injuries and ye trying to avoid that stuff, and
it's hard to convince him that doing other things.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
Cross training could be beneficial.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
Yeah. So I just played everything.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
I played soccer growing up, and the only thing I
do regret is I didn't get to play hockey in
Fort Collins. The Epic Center didn't have an ice rink
until I was in sixth or seventh grade. Oh, and
I played a year in I think I sixth grade,
so I was a bantam. And then my parents sat
me down and said it would be a lot easier

(04:00):
on us if you just played basketball.

Speaker 3 (04:03):
Put this five am ice time thing is not really
driving with us.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
So, so I didn't get to play a lot of hockey.
I actually play now Denver Fire has a team and
nice Valor dads have these pickup games, and so I
love the sport.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
I'm terrible at it, but.

Speaker 3 (04:18):
It's Oh I bet you're not terrible at it.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
It's fun. So yeah, I just tried to do everything.

Speaker 3 (04:23):
That's awesome. Okay, So when did you, then, Ryan, figure
out that football was kind of your sport and what
you might end up doing in college?

Speaker 1 (04:31):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (04:31):
Football was my sports since I can remember just watching
it with my parents. They both went to Nebraska, so
we grew up watching college football every single weekend.

Speaker 3 (04:42):
How did that go with you going to see you?

Speaker 1 (04:44):
You know?

Speaker 2 (04:45):
With my parents, it was fine, they became to see
you fans. With my grandparents, Bay did not. I would
be playing their grandson in the game and they would still.

Speaker 3 (04:56):
Be rooting for the Huskers. Are you kidding me?

Speaker 2 (04:59):
They wanted me to personally have a good game, but
they didn't want my team to.

Speaker 1 (05:02):
Actually, it was like.

Speaker 3 (05:03):
Having a fantasy football team right where you're like, I
don't want them to win, but I'd like this guy
to do well.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
Yeah, exactly that one side of my grandparents, my dad's side.
My other grandparents were a little more supportive of me
and the team and stuff. So it was the sport
that I always loved. And I remember I was a
little old for my age. I have a September birthday,
so my parents had me start later rather than earlier.
And you couldn't play tackle football till it was either

(05:30):
fourth or fifth grade or something, and I was technically
old enough to, but they wouldn't let me play, and
so I got all mad because all I really wanted
to do was play football, and they maybe play soccer.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
For one more year.

Speaker 3 (05:41):
And you were probably bigger than most of the kids too,
since you were a year older.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
I was a late bloomer. Like I went to see you.
Out of high school. I was one hundred and seventy
five pounds.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
And then I readcher that year came back as a
sophomore two hundred and five pounds.

Speaker 1 (05:54):
So I grew a lot, wow, to the point.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
Where my mom actually asked me if I was doing
anything illegal to put on way, which.

Speaker 3 (06:01):
I wasn't, but just a boy, that's what happened.

Speaker 1 (06:04):
I just grew Yeah, I grew late.

Speaker 3 (06:06):
And what was defense your thing too? Or did you
play both sides in high school? Nope, wide receiver.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
I started out like everybody, wanting to score touchdowns. I
wanted to be a running back, and I played running
back all the way through high school. I played running
back in cornerback because in those days far less specialized
and you could play both.

Speaker 1 (06:21):
Sides of the ball. So I did that. I returned punts.

Speaker 2 (06:24):
Then my senior year, we got a really fast kid
on the team who was an underclassman, but he took
my running back spot. So I ended up playing slot
back or something like that. But yeah, I played both ways.
I didn't play safety. I played corner, but I ended
up playing safety in college.

Speaker 3 (06:40):
Did you get recruited by others besides ce you and
and I'm assuming coach McCartney recruited you. He was your coach.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
No began, No one recruited me, no one.

Speaker 3 (06:48):
Did you walk on?

Speaker 1 (06:49):
Yeah I got. I didn't know that, Yeah I know.

Speaker 2 (06:51):
I think the only scholarship offer I got was a
half scholarship to School of Mines. I visited there and
I started an engineering school at you ended up transferring
to architecture, but at one point I wanted to be
an engineer, so I was thinking School of Minds would
be a great place.

Speaker 3 (07:06):
You no kidding, so see as you didn't either, even
though you were in the backyard.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
Really no, and I took a visit.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
I had a friend, Pete Money, who ended up going
to Wisconsin and then playing for the Giants for a while,
and I went with him on his visit to see you,
and had someone in Fort Collins write a letter who
knew Coach Mac personally, so they granted me a It
was a invited walk on, so I got invited to
training camp and then as long as I didn't stumble

(07:32):
and fall too much, then I got to stay on
the team.

Speaker 3 (07:35):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
So I didn't have to go to the traditional walk
on tryout process. I just walked on and invited.

Speaker 1 (07:41):
Walk on, I think, yeah.

Speaker 3 (07:42):
And eventually were you scholarship?

Speaker 1 (07:43):
Yep?

Speaker 2 (07:44):
After two years, Coach Mac gave me a scholarship. So
I read here to my first year, played special teams
my second year mostly just kickoff team, and then got
a scholarship after that.

Speaker 3 (07:53):
That's pretty cool. That's I mean, that takes a lot
Ryan to walk on and then try and work that
hard to eventually be scholarship, especially around that time with
that team in the nineties. Oh, with coach mag there
were no slouches on that team.

Speaker 1 (08:06):
No.

Speaker 2 (08:06):
No, I almost quit my freshman year, did you. I
was small and school was overwhelming. Engineering school was hard.
I'd always done well in school. I wasn't doing well
in school. I was on the scout team playing against
like I specifically remember Chris Naoli, offensive lineman who also
played in the NFL for a while for the Saints.
For whatever reason, he was always like the pulling guard
or something when I was coming and he was not nice.

(08:30):
That's very nice to human being, but not a nice
on the football field.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
Kind of guy.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah, And it was just You're getting beat up at
day after day. You're not playing, so all you're doing
is practicing, and then I'm just scholastically like I was
just in the tube.

Speaker 3 (08:44):
So yeah, but you didn't didn't quick? No. Was there
anything defining moment wise that that made you kind of
keep going at that point? Did anybody talk to you?
Did you have anybody that pulled you aside?

Speaker 1 (08:54):
No?

Speaker 2 (08:54):
I went and talked to a couple engineering professors and
they said, it's really difficult to play a sport.

Speaker 1 (09:01):
And be an engineer. You might have to choose.

Speaker 2 (09:04):
I wasn't really enjoying engineering, to be honest, and I
still felt like I liked football. It was just a
frustrating period. So I switched to architecture school. That was
a much more creative major than engineering. Is just so
black and white and I needed something a little less
black and white. It took just as much time, perhaps more,
but I enjoyed it more.

Speaker 3 (09:25):
And something's more fun. That makes a difference.

Speaker 2 (09:28):
Yeah, And so that helped, and then I was able
to kind of refocus when some of it's just you're adjusting,
you know, you have to. There's a period where you're
not at your house anymore. You're on your own. You're
inundated with all the temptations of college life, and like
no one's there to wake you up to make sure
you get to your eight o'clock in the morning class.
All of our classes were in the mornings because practice
was in the afternoon. We didn't get paid, you know,

(09:50):
like I wasn't making any money.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
So it was a lot. It's just a lot.

Speaker 3 (09:54):
Yeah, wow. Well, and I know you played a lot
of special teams. I had to tap into Dave Platty,
the longtime historian and sid at Cu, So you have
eight special teams points records, and he said they don't
even keep track of those anymore. So now you have
them in I can never.

Speaker 1 (10:10):
Say it right, perfectuity, forever, yours.

Speaker 3 (10:13):
Forever, which I think is really cool. Yeah, that's awesome.
But then also you hold records for the most tackles
by a dB in a game you had twenty eight
against Michigan in nineteen ninety seven, and the most tackles
in a season by a defensive back with one hundred
and seventy in nineteen ninety seven. So that ninety seven season,
your last year was pretty spectacular. What kind of clicked

(10:34):
and good thing that you stuck around after that freshman season?

Speaker 1 (10:37):
Yeah, I just had.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
To kind of take small strides along the way. Freshman year,
I red shirted, sort of got my feet underneath me.
Sophomore year, I think I only played for the majority
of the time.

Speaker 1 (10:48):
I only played kickoffs. I missed letter.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
I remember missing my letter by like four plays because
you had to have one hundred plays and I.

Speaker 1 (10:54):
Think I had like ninety six.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
No even guys on the team were like, hey, can
we like figure something out?

Speaker 1 (10:59):
And coach acts pretty like nope.

Speaker 3 (11:01):
Sorry, it's how it goes black and white.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
So the next year I played all the special teams.
My red shirt sophomore year year after that, I played
all the special teams and nickel defense. I didn't start
as a safety until my senior year.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
So okay, that's why.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
I had all those tackles my senior year because I
was actually on the field.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
I had time. Yeah, I had to just work my
way through.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
It's like I tell my son, the first thing I
did was I just worked really hard in the weight
room because if you get the strength and conditioning coaches
on your side, it's amazing how many head coaches will
go to the strength and conditioning coaches and.

Speaker 1 (11:36):
Ask like, hey, who who's showing up? Like you have
any like a yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
So they advocated for me, and I kept getting more
and more opportunities, and then that that senior year, I
just finally got on the field and I had no pressure.
I mean, despite the fact that I played for a
school with a lot of expectations and a lot of
really good athletes. It worked in my favor because people
were coming you know, NFL scouts were coming to watch people,
and so those guys had they had all the pressure,

(12:02):
they had, all the pressure they had the eyes looking
at them.

Speaker 3 (12:04):
Were you even thinking that you would have a chance
in the NFL?

Speaker 2 (12:07):
No, I mean I always that was always my dream,
right to do. Yeah, And so I just was out
playing football, having fun. And then towards the end of
the year, I started getting the feeling that maybe I
was getting some looks, and that just motivated me more
to try to do well. And some of it's just
I mean, a lot of it's preparation and just being

(12:28):
ready for when you do get your opportunity, yep. And
then a lot of it's just luck. I mean, unfortunately,
there's just there is a component of good.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
Fortune in this.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
It's kind of like I think the music industry, like
if you ever watch America's Got Talent or whatever, you
just think, or go to Nashville and just go to
these little dive bars and and you're thinking, why is
this person not world famous?

Speaker 3 (12:49):
Right?

Speaker 2 (12:50):
I think it's the same way with sports. My son
plays hockey, and I for hockey for sure. You go
and watch do you play? And you think every single
one of these guys should be in the NHL, but
they're not. And some of them probably could be and
just don't get the right chance. And probably some of
them maybe shouldn't be and get the right chance, and
just that's just how life goes sometimes.

Speaker 1 (13:09):
Yeah, and for me, it all kind of lined up.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
I felt like I was well prepared and I just
got kind of lucky to have the right opportunity.

Speaker 3 (13:17):
Yeah, that's cool, And that is so how it happens
so often, Ryan, where it's you're kind of in the
right place at the right time, But if you aren't
prepared at that time, when you're in the right place
at the right time, then nothing will happen. So that's
where that preparation thing is so key. So as you
move on to so do you do graduate? Do you
get your degree? Then that y're okay, And then in
nineteen ninety eight you get drafted in the fifth round.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah, yeah, I remember that day because my as luck
would have it somehow, our landline again, this is a long.

Speaker 3 (13:46):
This is nineteen ninety eight.

Speaker 2 (13:47):
Yes, our landline was tied up or something like it
was out.

Speaker 3 (13:53):
So are you at your parents' house?

Speaker 1 (13:54):
Are you in my parents collins All right.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
I think my agent ended up calling my girlfriend the time,
but it was after I knew I wasn't going to
be a first day drafty. And then back then, I
think they did the first two or three rounds the
first day, and then after that it was the rest
of them. We're watching ESPN and I saw my name
come along the bottom. Was like, oh, wait, what the
did I just get drafted? And then seconds later my

(14:18):
girlfriend's phone rang ted Marchibroda. He called in Ozzie Newsome
and they said that they had drafted me. And so
I was super excited to get that.

Speaker 3 (14:26):
What'd you think then, because you didn't really I mean,
you kind of knew probably you had an agent at
that point. But now you're going to go and try
out for the NFL.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
Yeah, I mean that's the realization of the dream, the
sort of childhood dream that Joe. No one thinks you
can do it. You know, these days, there's a little
more of a path. I guess there's so much specialty
and all these things, like you have the IMG world
and all these places where you've got a pretty good
chance of if you're gonna make it.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
They probably know there. But for me, you know, you're
just growing.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
Up, you're playing football for fun, and you're you know,
not recruited out of high school, and all this sort
of stuff happens, and then you finally get this chance
where you're kind of like, yeah, I told you, you know,
I told you I could do it, And that's a
cool feeling. Unfortunately didn't last all that long, but at
least you know, you get there and you get to
have that brief experience. In my case, but for a

(15:17):
lot of people, I think they have similar stories and
they end up they always see all these Division three
guys in the NFL that have Oh and I specifically
remember Jeff Saturday was a free agent at Baltimore and
we went out to like pizza or something was he
and I and a couple of other guys, and I remember
him saying like, yeah, I'm probably just gonna end up

(15:37):
going back to the Coca Cola plant in Atlanta where
my dad works, and you know, we'll just see how
this all turns out. He obviously didn't make the Ravens
but got picked up by the Colts and had.

Speaker 3 (15:46):
A yeah best friend.

Speaker 1 (15:50):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:50):
So wow, there are tons of those really cool stories
there are.

Speaker 3 (15:54):
So with the Ravens specifically, you make it through I mean,
you do probably the rookie training camp and all that,
get to regular training camp, and that's when you get cut.
What happens there.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
I actually had a really good preseason game against the Bears,
and I remember I had caused a fumble and on
a punk coverage and one of the harballs. He's like, Oh,
somebody's trying to make this team, and I felt really good.
The next preseason game, I think it was the second
preseason game, was against the Eagles.

Speaker 1 (16:21):
I had a less good game.

Speaker 2 (16:24):
Not a terrible game, but just a less good And
the way it sort of works in that industry is
you're just a commodity. We had suffered a lot of
defensive line injuries and I was the bottom of the
depth chart of defensive backs. So they called me in
and said, hey, we need to bring in some defensive linemen. Unfortunately,
we've got a lot of defensive backs and at the time,

(16:45):
they had this guy, Benny Thompson, who.

Speaker 1 (16:47):
Was a special teams specialist, which was kind of what
they brought me in for.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
And so they had someone and I didn't have a
good enough game that game to really justify them keeping me,
so they released me.

Speaker 3 (17:00):
You're a casualty of numbers, and when the roster, when
there's injuries and things like that, they've got to move
things around, and it's just it's chess pieces going around
and you're just a number. Yeah, Yeah, which is hard.

Speaker 1 (17:11):
That's very hard. You know.

Speaker 2 (17:12):
You get a knock on your door at like six
in the morning and they're like, hey, coach needs to
see you. Bring your playbook and you obviously know what
that means. And then you just turn it in and
you're like what now, kind of thing?

Speaker 3 (17:21):
Do you fly me home? Now?

Speaker 1 (17:23):
Like?

Speaker 3 (17:23):
What do I do?

Speaker 1 (17:24):
Yeah, it's crazy.

Speaker 2 (17:25):
I went So, Baltimore is close to Annapolis and there's
some I'd always wanted to learn to sail. So I
went down there and signed up for some sailing lessons
and ended.

Speaker 3 (17:35):
Up getting right away, yeah, like the next day.

Speaker 2 (17:38):
Yeah, Because I was like, I don't know what to
do and so and then Peter Shaeffer, who is my
agent and still good friend, called and said, the Raiders
want to try you out. And then I started bouncing
around to different places and doing some individual workouts for
other teams than the Panthers, and.

Speaker 3 (17:53):
Panthers signed you right, yeah, and you actually that's who
you got your very first start during the regular season with.
But again not very long.

Speaker 2 (18:01):
No nine total seconds, although one of the fire guys
informed me that it was actually only six seconds.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
On the clock.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
Yeah, because I was a walk around, like, yeah, I
think I have the shortest I know, I have the
shortest NFL career where you actually played in a regular
season game.

Speaker 1 (18:16):
I was like nine seconds and They're like, whoa, this
say six.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
So I'm like, okay to your fire fighter doesn't start
on a kickoff until but there's three seconds.

Speaker 1 (18:26):
At the ball in the air, So yeah, what happened.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
I was so I initially got picked up and I
was on the practice squad. They activated me week ten
to play against the Jets, and I was going to
have a pretty decent role because I was going to
be the nickel safety.

Speaker 1 (18:41):
We were playing I think it was Vinny Testaverdy, and.

Speaker 2 (18:43):
They passed a lot, so I was going to get
to play a lot and I was excited. And obviously
on the special teams and on the opening kickoff, it
was the old way they did opening kickoffs, where you
ran as hard as you could down the field, and
I forget who the running back was but he was
running up the field and I dove out to try
to trip them up.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
Thought that I had until recently.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
When the fire guys pulled it up and were like,
it doesn't look like you made the tackle.

Speaker 1 (19:07):
I was like, uh, well, thanks for shattering that. At
least I thought I had one.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
Tackle, but no, he kept going and shortly after was tackled.
But it was nothing terribly traumatic, just probably this landed
on my shoulder the same way that I had hundreds
of times before, but this time it dislocated and tore
all the like the rotator cuff and tendons and stuff.
And I remember like walking off the field with assistance

(19:31):
from the trainers, and Sean Gilbert was on the team
and he was like, hey, welcome to the NFL, like
rookie kind of not I think, understanding the gravity of
the injury, right, the training staff was like, all right,
we're gonna pop it back in and if it stays in,
then you can keep playing. So they popped it back
in and it just fell right back out, and so
they're like, you can't obviously keep playing.

Speaker 3 (19:53):
Very painful too.

Speaker 2 (19:54):
I think it was so emotionally painful that the physical
pain didn't register. Yeah, so then you're walking off the field,
you go get your x rays and all the confirmation
of the injury happens. I had surgery within a few days,
and that was kind of it. Like, you know, obviously
one play isn't enough to get a whole lot of
film on you. There's a new wave of talented football

(20:18):
players coming out of college every year.

Speaker 1 (20:20):
Yep, And again, you're just a commodity.

Speaker 2 (20:22):
And I rehab. They brought me back the year after,
but we had a terrible season. They fired the whole
coaching staff. It was a brand new coaching staff, and
it was almost like the second I got medical clearance,
they released me.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
And that that was kind of that.

Speaker 2 (20:34):
So and honestly, I wasn't sure I wanted to play anymore.
And once you lose that at that level, then you're
you're done.

Speaker 3 (20:45):
You can't do it.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (20:46):
Yeah, And that's what I hear from a lot of
guys where they're like, I just didn't have the feeling
that I wanted to do it anymore, and that's when
you know it is it's time. It's definitely time. So
when you were rehabbing, did you stay in Carolina and
do that or let me.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
I'm home, I would say mail. And I rehabbed through
Howard Head.

Speaker 2 (21:04):
So that was great actually because I was week ten,
You're not coming back to play, right, and so they said, hey,
if you want to go, you can go.

Speaker 3 (21:12):
Oh that's nice.

Speaker 1 (21:13):
So they did that and that was nice.

Speaker 3 (21:15):
Yeah, so you rehab and then you also you got
to try out with the Seahawks in ninety nine.

Speaker 2 (21:22):
Yeah, okay, So I went out with them. They signed me,
and I could see the writing on the wall there too.
I feel like they brought me in as like planed
c maybe because I was getting zero reps on anything.

Speaker 3 (21:36):
You're definitely a body at that point.

Speaker 1 (21:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
And then again like Peter Schaeffer, it was Mike Holmgren
was up there and he had gotten a hold of
their coaching staff and convinced them to do like a
little mini scrimmage thing with like the guys on the
bottom of the roster. And I did awful And that
was kind of where I was like, you know what,
I just like, my heart is not in this.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
I felt slow.

Speaker 2 (21:57):
I just felt like I don't know if I was
entire earlier covered from my injury and just like everything
was circulating in the wrong direction, and so I just
kind of stuck it out until the inevitable release came.
And at that point I left Seattle and went to
Costa Rica for two months oh wow, and then just

(22:18):
hung out there. Got a chance to go play in Europe.

Speaker 3 (22:21):
Time, played with the Barcelona Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:25):
And so what was that like? That was amazing.

Speaker 3 (22:27):
That's what I hear from everybody that's gone over to
NFL Europe about the experience was unreal.

Speaker 1 (22:32):
Yeah. So again lucky there. Do you remember Chip.

Speaker 3 (22:34):
Beak Oh yeah, yeah, John beek Son.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
Yeah, he knew me from four Collins. They grew up
in the same neighborhood as me. He was on the
Barcelona coaching staff. So I got that opportunity to go
over and play with them, and we lived on the beach,
like the owner of the Barcelona Dragons had a hotel
in this little tiny town called Siechus outside of Barcelona
on the beach. We would practice from nine to eleven,

(22:57):
two hours, and then come back and just go to
the beach and hang out.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
And the games were super low pressure.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
There's no the games you played in like Germany and
those places, they'd get quite a few people, but the
Barcelona fans, they're soccer people.

Speaker 1 (23:11):
Yeah, they would.

Speaker 2 (23:12):
Cheer for both teams, you know, like it was they
were just there to basically have fun.

Speaker 3 (23:16):
Well that's like even when we go to London now,
I think it's getting more where people understand what's going on,
but they'll wear any jersey that they have and they
just show up and they're just happy to beat a
football game and they'll cheer for everything.

Speaker 1 (23:27):
Totally. Yeah, And it was so much fun.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
But again, I wasn't standing out, you know, like I
was getting my reps and having fun, but I just
didn't feel great.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
So I just kind of let that.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
Experience be what it was, kind of knowing it was
going to be the Swan song to football, which.

Speaker 1 (23:45):
Was a great way to go to go out. Absolutely yeah,
And then I went home and started to try to
figure out the rest of my life.

Speaker 3 (23:51):
Right, Okay, So then that is, let's say you did
Barcelona in two thousand. You weren't on the Bachelorette till three.
So what happens in those couple of years in there?
Do you start using your degree and doing some things?

Speaker 1 (24:04):
Nope, I've never used my degree. You never have because
I have a.

Speaker 2 (24:08):
Bachelor's degree in architecture environmental design in order to practice
I was going to have to go back and get
a master's. I just don't do well. I love drawing
and I love art, and I love all those things.
I don't love sitting in an office for you're.

Speaker 3 (24:21):
An adventure outside time. Yeah, I don't see you as
an office guy. No.

Speaker 2 (24:24):
So I was like, all right, I got to figure
something else I to do. And I referred back to
my childhood. I was like, well, I always wanted to
be a football player. What was after that? It was
cowboy or firefighter?

Speaker 3 (24:36):
So not a lot of money being a cowboy.

Speaker 2 (24:38):
I didn't know how to get started in that. So
didn't have a horse, no, didn't have a truck.

Speaker 1 (24:43):
Nothing.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
So my junior high geometry teacher, her husband was the
fire chief in Fort Collins at the time, so I
went and talked to him. He suggested going and getting
my EMT because that's a large component of what we do.
If I enjoyed that, then to take the next steps
and just applying to fire departments. So I went to Pitkin,

(25:04):
Colorado as part of a Knowles program and did a
month log intensive like EMT, but also wilderness EMT.

Speaker 1 (25:10):
So it's kind of cool. You got both sides of
it nice. I loved it.

Speaker 2 (25:14):
My instructor was a former military PJ was super cool guy,
and I just loved it.

Speaker 1 (25:18):
I moved to Vail.

Speaker 2 (25:20):
I had a buddy there, so I did the sort
of typical sleep on a couch, lived in Veil ski
bum waited tables at the Red Lion, and then found
out about Veil Fire Department's residence program. One of the
bouncers at the Red Lion was a Veil Fire resident,
which is like a part time firefighters.

Speaker 1 (25:37):
You're kind of like.

Speaker 3 (25:38):
Learning and training kind of thing. Okay, so I.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
Signed up and got that position.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
A year later, I got hired on full time there
and that started my fire service career.

Speaker 3 (25:49):
Okay, so you've been doing that for a long time now,
you're almost at twenty five years.

Speaker 2 (25:53):
Twenty five years, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's been the perfect
career for me. Is it's very similar in cold sure
to sports and also in expectation. You know, you have
to keep yourself physically fit for the most part. A
lot of guys kind of avoid that somehow, but most
guys don't.

Speaker 1 (26:08):
You know, there's that.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
Team camaraderie, you're depending on each other, you have a
role to play, and there's leadership opportunities and it's very
similar feel to athletics.

Speaker 1 (26:19):
Yes, so it just was easy.

Speaker 3 (26:20):
Amazing to me how many former professional football players have
become firefighters. I mean, I've talked to a lot of
them on this podcast and they bring that up a
lot about then the firehouse is a locker room with
your brothers and sisters, and it's it's like that. But
also Chase Vaughn said, you know, there's there's nothing else
that gives me that rush of going on a field
like I do going on a call. Yeah, and there's

(26:42):
something to that, I think where that's the one thing
that professional athletes will miss so much, is that that rush,
that high you get from playing, and it's hard to
get that anywhere else.

Speaker 1 (26:51):
It's illegal. In most places, it is illegal. Yeah, you
will get arrested if you try out water so.

Speaker 3 (26:56):
That he's like, I can't just walk down the street
hit people like I can't on the field.

Speaker 1 (26:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
So so yes, I mean it was it was another
fertuitous opportunity for me. This sort of the way it
all worked out, and then I really found a home
in the fire service and still doing it at least
for a few more years.

Speaker 3 (27:11):
That's great. I love it. Okay, So then what prompts
you after a couple of years of doing that to
then become a contestant on the very first Bachelorette?

Speaker 1 (27:21):
I get that question a lot of it.

Speaker 3 (27:22):
I bet you do. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:25):
So going back to college, I lived with a young
man named Tim Willison who met a girl I don't
know what her name before marriage whatever.

Speaker 1 (27:34):
That like, what is wor this is my fifty one
year old brain stroke.

Speaker 3 (27:39):
That's okay, I got you.

Speaker 2 (27:41):
Her name was Heather and she was on a different
reality show but had the same casting producers as the Bachelorette.

Speaker 1 (27:49):
So the casting.

Speaker 2 (27:49):
Producers went to her and asked her if she knew
any guys that might be interested in the show.

Speaker 1 (27:54):
Trista was going to be the first Bachelorette, so the
Bachelorette was new and they needed to find guys to
be on it.

Speaker 2 (27:59):
So she signed myself and a couple other guys who
had lived with Tim in college up. She's like, hey,
Tim's got these roommates.

Speaker 3 (28:08):
Did you know she signed you up?

Speaker 1 (28:10):
Not immediately?

Speaker 2 (28:12):
No, And we got a call from the casting We
all got calls from the casting prod.

Speaker 1 (28:17):
Heather suggested, you might be interested in this, and I
was like, no, thanks. They had not not for me.

Speaker 2 (28:24):
This was at the time of like Temptation Island and
all these sorts of weird reality shows for and I
know who I am as a person, and I said, listen,
like I am zero entertainment.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
Like I don't have I'm the people.

Speaker 2 (28:38):
I'm the guy that There was a girl that I
knew in college who I was friends with, still friends with.
Oh actually, Rachel Walkole or she just got inducted into
the CU Hall of Fame.

Speaker 3 (28:45):
Oh yeah, she.

Speaker 1 (28:46):
Would call and talk to me.

Speaker 2 (28:48):
She graduated an early year earlier because my voice would
make her sleepy and she could go to bed. So
like that's that's like the.

Speaker 3 (28:57):
The role I played for the Super Calm.

Speaker 1 (28:59):
Like yeah, yeah, so I'm like this and this like
trust me.

Speaker 3 (29:03):
TV doesn't want me. Reality TV does not want.

Speaker 2 (29:05):
Me, which I don't know if that was like challenging
to them, and they're like, oh, well, come on, just
fill out the application. Okay, how about we fly you
out here, just go through the interview process. Fine, So
as bad as I am at television. I'm equally bad
still at saying no to people. Like Trista would always
be We'll walk down the sixteen Street mall or something,

(29:28):
and obviously there's lots of homeless people down.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
There, and she's like, don't look at them.

Speaker 2 (29:31):
Don't look at them, because I'll look at him and
they'll be like, sir, is there anything you can Okay, fine.

Speaker 3 (29:36):
You're emptying out your Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
So I'm just bad at that stuff, and so I
just kept saying, fine, okay, is that.

Speaker 3 (29:42):
Why you finally came on this podcast?

Speaker 1 (29:44):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (29:45):
Yeah, just stop texting me if I just say yes.

Speaker 2 (29:50):
Yeah, so that's it, Okay, why don't you just come
out for the first day whatever.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
So I asked for a week off of work, show
up for the first day, and ended up being there for.

Speaker 2 (30:00):
I continually had to call the fire chief back, Hey,
I might need one more week here.

Speaker 1 (30:04):
I'm still on the show, believe it or not.

Speaker 2 (30:06):
I remember seeing like Jamie blythe who is like a
Kendall replica, and I'm like, what am I doing here?
Like this is these guys are all like boisterous personalities
and like Bob Guiney who ended up being a bachelor
it's like funny and he can sing and all these
sorts of things.

Speaker 1 (30:25):
I'm like, this is am I so dumb, So I
write a poem of all things.

Speaker 3 (30:30):
You're very good at poetry, though you write poems a lot.

Speaker 2 (30:32):
I've gotten back into it. Actually took a break. I've
just needed to creative outlets. I've gotten back into it.

Speaker 3 (30:37):
I wrote a very nice one you did for Tristan
her birthday.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
Yeah, just wrote that one.

Speaker 3 (30:41):
Yes, Yeah, that was very nice.

Speaker 1 (30:43):
Yeah. So I've enjoyed getting back into that.

Speaker 2 (30:45):
But I wrote her a poem and gave it to her,
and I guess it worked because she kept me around
and so I was like, oh, the poem thing seems
to be working. So I kind of kept that theme
going throughout the show and here we are.

Speaker 3 (30:58):
Did you have any idea as everything kind of progressed?
Was it just surprising to you that you kept being
one that would stay around with each round?

Speaker 1 (31:08):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (31:08):
Yeah, especially at the beginning, just because there were so many,
so many really good guys, Like it's different now than
it was then, and people I think have a hard
time understanding.

Speaker 1 (31:17):
All of the guys got along really well. They were
all awesome.

Speaker 2 (31:20):
There were a couple of their firemen on there and
some athletes, and it was like frat house atmosphere to
the point where you see it now where men or
women don't get invited on the individual date and they're like, oh,
I really wanted this opportunity. We would get invited on
the individual date and be like a.

Speaker 3 (31:40):
Hang out with the guys.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
I'll be back, so you guys, just keep my drink
cold or whatever. Like on the one hand, it was great,
you're getting to know Trista and that's like was kind.

Speaker 1 (31:48):
Of the point. But on the other hand, you're like,
it's way more fun just hanging out.

Speaker 2 (31:50):
With these guys until you obviously gets to the point
where in my case, like I really did get to
know Trista and I was like, I can't really like her,
and then the sort of the whole thing changes. But
by then most of the other guys are gone anyway,
and you're like.

Speaker 1 (32:05):
The focus shifts. But yeah, it was.

Speaker 2 (32:08):
An interesting kind of experience that I don't know exactly
how or why it happened.

Speaker 3 (32:15):
I know, because you don't seem like the guy that
would want that attention look for that kind of an opportunity,
Like there's I mean, it was just it just happened,
which is probably why you guys have survived this whole
time and why maybe it was because it was way
more organic than what a lot of reality TV is.

Speaker 1 (32:33):
It is for sure why it happened.

Speaker 2 (32:34):
I attribute a lot of why she picked me to
that because I just didn't know anything about the show.

Speaker 1 (32:39):
I just was kind of there.

Speaker 2 (32:41):
I think she could pick up on my level of
discomfort and that sort of stuff in a way.

Speaker 1 (32:47):
She kind of helped me through that.

Speaker 2 (32:48):
And then for her, she really wasn't looking to be famous.
She I mean, she moved to Vale. She was living
in at the time Los Angeles, but prior to that
Miami she loves warm, midweather.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
She moved cold, dry veil, small community.

Speaker 2 (33:04):
She likes more culture and everything the Veil isn't She
accepted just because she wanted to be a wife and
a mom and like she legitimately wanted to.

Speaker 1 (33:15):
Start that part of her life.

Speaker 3 (33:17):
That says a lot.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
That's why. I mean, that's like when you're not when your.

Speaker 2 (33:20):
Focus isn't you know, trying. And at the time, and
we were we were young, and there was I think
my space was the there was no media, and it
was all chat boards and stuff like that. So I
just had this conversation with our kids at dinner for
Christa's birthday because we're going to do a People magazine
shoot coming up, which we haven't done for a while.

Speaker 1 (33:40):
But like, yeah, like in the old days, this is
how you got sort.

Speaker 3 (33:46):
Of that's how people knew about you.

Speaker 2 (33:47):
Yeah, like they read about this stuff, like you couldn't
just post something instantly and whether when you were hired
to do campaigns, people wanted you to try to get
in these magazines and things, and so.

Speaker 1 (33:58):
We did a lot of that. We didn't get a
lot of opportunity.

Speaker 2 (34:01):
To do social media stuff, which I think turned out
to be a real blessing, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (34:05):
Because you see so many of them now where things
happen on social media and it just blows up the
show or a person's you know, something that happened with
that person, and you guys didn't have to deal with
any of that, which is good.

Speaker 2 (34:17):
Yeah, yeah, And then you know the other side is
you don't get the opportunity because I think the question
was like my daughter was like.

Speaker 1 (34:24):
Mom, do you think he would be a lot.

Speaker 2 (34:26):
More rich if I would have been born a boy
than a girl, because you know, I have all these
clothes and stuff, and we're like, oh, yeah, we would
be like way more.

Speaker 3 (34:36):
If they didn't do dance and didn't have to buy
you all your clothes. We'd have a pay raise.

Speaker 2 (34:39):
Yes, we'd have a bigger house, like daughter, mostly all
your fault. No, it turned into like, you know, honestly,
like people are making a lot more money off of
reality shows now because of the social media component. However,
like you might not even exist had social media been
a part of it, because who knows if we would
have survived that whole.

Speaker 3 (34:59):
Yeah, it's a double edged sword.

Speaker 1 (35:01):
Yeah, it really will take this life over any alternative.

Speaker 3 (35:05):
Yeah. So when you are chosen in two thousand and three,
you guys have a big wedding at the end of
that year that becomes a three part series on TV.
I mean again, that's not your style, Ryan, So how
do you deal with that and go, Okay, here we
go three part series on Trista and Ryan's wedding.

Speaker 1 (35:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:22):
I lean on Trista a lot for this sort of stuff.
She's really good at it. Yeah, And ultimately we had
the opportunity to do it, and there was a part
of us that just wanted to say, you know, no,
let's just do a traditional thing, but they offered us
a million dollars, which to us still is a lot
of money, but.

Speaker 1 (35:41):
Even in two thousand and three, Yeah, it was a
lot of money.

Speaker 2 (35:43):
Yeah, in your twenties, we're like, hey, we can buy
a house with This is going to make a big difference.
All of our friends are going to be able to
go and they're going to stay at this really cool resort,
and why don't we just embrace the craziness and enjoy it.
And then a year later we went on a trip
to South Africa and renewed our vows on our first

(36:05):
year anniversary with like a tribal priest guy.

Speaker 1 (36:08):
It was just us and some like hippos, you know.

Speaker 3 (36:11):
So perfect we figured in the style.

Speaker 1 (36:13):
Yeah, so we got it.

Speaker 2 (36:14):
We got it right, Like if you just took the
two and blended them together, we got it right. So
we were able to take advantage of that, again, really
unique opportunity. I think everyone had a blast at our
wedding and we have really fond memories of it because
we didn't let it become like this big, high pressure thing,
and it gave us this opportunity to get our life started.

Speaker 3 (36:35):
That's pretty cool. And I bet you there's not a
lot of people that would say, now, I'd turn that down,
no way.

Speaker 1 (36:41):
No, Yeah, I think it was the.

Speaker 3 (36:43):
Right absolutely, Yeah, okay. And then you also were on
season nine of American Ninja Warrior. What made you do that?
Because again this is not but but then now we're
talking fitness, it's it's a different gig.

Speaker 1 (36:55):
Yeah. Was that the Denver one.

Speaker 3 (36:57):
Might have been? Did you do it a couple of times?

Speaker 1 (36:59):
I did it three times?

Speaker 3 (37:00):
Oh three? Oh wow?

Speaker 1 (37:01):
Yea, And I never did well on any of them,
but they surprised. Yeah, well, it's hard.

Speaker 3 (37:06):
The way I got on, no doubt.

Speaker 1 (37:07):
The way I got on it was.

Speaker 2 (37:08):
The people said, hey, we're doing this one in Denver,
would you like to be a part? And I said, yeah,
I've always wanted to be a part. Even before it
was American Ninja Warrior.

Speaker 1 (37:15):
We used to watch the.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
Actual Ninja Warrior or at the Firehouse. So I always
wondered if I could do it, and I really thought
like that I could. I practiced it and had the
whole warped wall thing down.

Speaker 1 (37:26):
But it's hard because.

Speaker 2 (37:28):
It's one it's in the middle of the night and
two you don't get to try anything. So the first
few obstacles are pretty straightforward, but then the other ones are, like,
I went out on a trampoline.

Speaker 1 (37:41):
Like you had.

Speaker 2 (37:42):
You had to kind of hold onto these punching back
looking things, and you had to jump out of a
spider wall onto a trampoline and jump onto a punching bag,
which seems pretty straightforward, but they're like super trampolines and
they tell you like, there's an X on there and
you have to land on it just right and don't
bend your nas So I landed a little bit off
on it and probably had a knee and it just
collapses you and then that you.

Speaker 3 (38:03):
Can't go forward. Yeah, and you can't emulate that. You
can't you know, you can make something like that to practice.

Speaker 2 (38:09):
There's a lot of little subtle things about those courses
that you probably don't see. You just see people not
make it, But there's these little things that if you
could go through it a couple.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
Of times, you'd be like, all right, I got it,
but you so it's hard.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
It's also an advantage to be someone like a gymnast
or a rock climber or someone with a really high
weight to strength ratio, and I have I don't feel
like I'm not a strong person, but I have a
pretty high weight part of There's a component there too,
which made it a little bit more difficult. I don't
think that's why I went out, but it made it
a little more difficult.

Speaker 3 (38:40):
So did you do better each time you did it?

Speaker 2 (38:42):
I went out almost exact like second or third, third
or fourth area every single time.

Speaker 1 (38:46):
It never got to the end.

Speaker 3 (38:47):
Oh interesting.

Speaker 1 (38:48):
It was either on trampoline one time, it was when
you run.

Speaker 2 (38:51):
Across, like the spinning barrels and stuff.

Speaker 1 (38:55):
That one got me.

Speaker 2 (38:57):
You had to swing and like jump and try to
rab something and I just missed it. But it always fun,
really fun, but you just feel I remember the Denver
one is specifically because my kids were younger at the time.

Speaker 1 (39:08):
I was undefeated on.

Speaker 2 (39:10):
Reality television shows like Had One Bachelorette and Fear Factor,
and I was like.

Speaker 3 (39:14):
Did Fear Factor too? I knew Trista did it. I
forgot you did it too.

Speaker 1 (39:17):
Okay, No, she didn't do it. She went with me.

Speaker 2 (39:20):
They convinced her tobout to eat worms as part of it.

Speaker 1 (39:25):
Okay, but she didn't do any of the other stuff.

Speaker 3 (39:27):
Oh you did it? Okay, that was a great show.

Speaker 1 (39:30):
Could have done it.

Speaker 3 (39:30):
My son, we we watched that all the time. He
loved Joe Rogan just because of Fear Factor.

Speaker 2 (39:35):
Yeah, yeah, bringing it back. They are, Yeah with Johnny Knoxville.

Speaker 1 (39:38):
I think it looks again. I don't know, it looks
way worse and i'm i'm's.

Speaker 3 (39:44):
The grossest thing you did when you were on Fear Factor.

Speaker 1 (39:47):
It was the worms thing you had.

Speaker 2 (39:49):
You had to initially pick up a bunch of worms
with your mouth and throw them into a blender in
order to get a key out. But at the very end,
you had to jump into a dumpster full of like
barn sludge and find a thermos full of more ground
up worms, pour it into a pint glass, and then
drink the pint glass, which just like tasted like slimy dirty,

(40:12):
but it was. And that's what they got trusted at
because she specifically said I don't want to do the
show because I don't.

Speaker 1 (40:18):
Like the gross stuff.

Speaker 3 (40:19):
That's all it is.

Speaker 2 (40:20):
And then Joe Rogan is like, hey, if you drink
this glass of worms, we'll donate a fifteen hundred dollars
to your favorite charity and She's like, how do I like,
I'm going to become the person that wouldn't drink a
glass of worms for charity?

Speaker 1 (40:32):
So she did it. I know he got it.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
But yeah, I thought for sure I was going to
do well on Ninja Warrior, and then I missed the
whatever and fell into the water. And I just look
over at my kids and they're like, like the disappointment
on their face?

Speaker 1 (40:49):
Anything right, I let them down? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (40:53):
And then you guys are are you guys doing something
with the cruise? With the Bachelorette cruise apparently?

Speaker 1 (40:58):
Yep, Okay, yeah we're going.

Speaker 3 (41:00):
I mean ends up showing Oh you're going on it.
She shows up. You know, she's been on the either
Golden she was on Golden Bachelor I think, or Bachelorette
one of them. Yeah, so there's those appearances. But okay,
you guys are involved with the cruise. You're going on
the cruise.

Speaker 1 (41:14):
Going on the cruise. Yeah, it's not for a year,
so okay, what happens in a year.

Speaker 2 (41:18):
Lots can happen in a year, but right now we're
on it.

Speaker 3 (41:23):
Wow, how do you feel about that?

Speaker 1 (41:24):
About also not my favorite thing?

Speaker 2 (41:26):
Yeah, but I mean my wife and I have this
conversation all the time, like I probably need to get
out and do more things like that, and she is
good at reminding me of that kind of stuff, so
and I always have a good time. Yeah, it's just
my tendency is to avoid that stuff. And then when
I saw like Bob and some of the people that

(41:46):
I know from the show, who I've spent time with
and enjoy So the problem is I don't know most
of the people anymore from this.

Speaker 3 (41:55):
It's not like you're watching it every season, right, yeah, yea.

Speaker 2 (41:58):
So it's just I may as well just be going
and hanging out with a bunch of strangers. But then
there's all these other responsibilities you have, Like if you're
gonna just go on a regular cruise, fine, but then
you have to do all this stuff right, and then
there's a.

Speaker 3 (42:12):
Lot Jesse, he's gonna come knocking on your door.

Speaker 1 (42:14):
Yeah, there's a lot of superficiality to it all.

Speaker 2 (42:16):
And I'm not I'm not good at that stuff, and
so and it's exhausting for me, Like I think, you know,
you know, there's two kinds of people, and I'm the
kind that I can go through those social experiences. But
it exhausts me. And trist is the kind of person
where she shows up there and it's like someone plugs
like just plugged the electricity into her.

Speaker 3 (42:35):
And she's like she thrives.

Speaker 1 (42:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
Yeah, So we're a good balance in that regard. But
and that's why I say I lean on her a
lot for that.

Speaker 3 (42:44):
She can help bring you in, you can help bring
her back. Right, Yes, you do end up doing that
a lot.

Speaker 1 (42:48):
Yeah, I try.

Speaker 3 (42:49):
Yeah. I mean, well, yeah, you're you're probably not telling
her a whole lot of what to do. Yeah, she's
kind of her own person.

Speaker 1 (42:57):
Yeah. All right.

Speaker 3 (42:58):
So you guys have the two kids junior and senior
in high school, and you moved recently from Vale down
to the metro city and now you're a Denver firefighter.
What came with the move to come down?

Speaker 2 (43:09):
Well, I started with Denver almost six years ago, so
I was commuting.

Speaker 1 (43:13):
Oh so that was rough.

Speaker 3 (43:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:15):
My folks are down here in South Denver and you
know they're older and you want to be close to them.
And honestly it was our son, Max is a hockey player,
and he just felt like he wanted to be challenged more,
both academically and physically. So one of his buddies had
taken a tour at Valor and spoke highly of it,
so he convinced Tristi to sign up, and she did

(43:37):
and they went down and again I was thinking, like,
you know, this is good. We'll give him a chance
to see it, and we're never going to leave. Well,
Trista came back and she's like, that place was really
pretty nice and we have friends that go there, and
so she started reaching out and asking about it. We
brought our daughter down to do the tour and me,
and then one thing.

Speaker 1 (43:55):
Led to the other. We're like, all right, let's make
this is the big time.

Speaker 2 (43:58):
And Vale had changed a lot, COVID chained to the
mountain communities a lot like oh yeah, sure, they're influx
of people from all over the place and got super
expensive and hard to live, and we just felt like
there was enough pushing us to change that we took
the leap and it was a rough first year, but
we've settled in now and I think it was the right.

Speaker 3 (44:17):
That's awesome. Yeah, and things do change like that. I mean,
the whole reason you were there was part of that
small town type of thing, and when that changes, it's
time to make a move.

Speaker 1 (44:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:27):
I think your life is short and you can get
stuck in your ruts and it's easier you get comfortable.
I think getting out of our comfort zone is what
we needed, despite the fact that it was. You know,
it's always going to be a little challenging when you
do that kind of stuff. But in the end, I'd
say the majority of the time, it usually works out.
One way or the other usually works out.

Speaker 3 (44:45):
Yeah, it's absolutely all right. Well, let's wrap this up. Ryan.
One last question that I ask all of my guests,
and I know that you do this with your kids. Now.
When you've had those moments of being down and whether
it was being you know, cut by the football teams
or out of your comfort zone when you were on
the Bachelorette, what do you tell people on how to
kind of get back up and keep moving forward. And

(45:07):
you deal with this a lot as a firefighter too,
you see some pretty rough moments for people.

Speaker 2 (45:11):
Yeah, I think just sometimes it's just reaffirming that you
care about them, like knowing that they have people behind
them that support them. There's a story that I can't
tell without crying, so I'm not going to tell.

Speaker 3 (45:22):
It, but people do cry on this podcast.

Speaker 2 (45:25):
It's about like it was with Max. He had a
really rough hockey season last year. I'll try to tell it,
but forgive me if I have to take a break.
So so part of what has worked really well for
Valor with him is he's become kind of spiritual and
he was going through this time. So I gave him
this quote Romans eight eighteen. The quote is the pain

(45:46):
you're going through now is nothing compared to the joy
that's coming.

Speaker 1 (45:52):
I haven't even got to the hard part anyway.

Speaker 2 (45:54):
So he accepts that quote. Works really hard those this stuff.
And then this last year, I took a promotional test,
a lieutenants promotional test, and it didn't do as well
on it as I'd hoped. It did okay, and I
had some disadvantages because I'm my seniority isn't as high,
and so I wanted to finish a little better and

(46:17):
I didn't, and so he knew I was frustrated.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
And this is the hard part.

Speaker 2 (46:23):
Every morning I leave work at like five thirty six
in the morning and there's a sticky note on the
door to the garage, and I'm thinking, oh, Max, probably
just I think he had forgotten his like hockey socks
like a week earlier, and I think he probably just
left a note to remind himself.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
Well, it's the quote he had loved me, that same quote. Wow.

Speaker 2 (46:49):
I've literally told this story like forty times and I
still can't do it.

Speaker 1 (46:53):
But anyway, it all came full circle.

Speaker 2 (46:56):
I was like, Okay, I'm doing something right, you know, like,
here's this kid that's eighteen years old, seventeen years old
at the time, and he's he's getting what I'm doing.
And so sometimes I think people just need like sometimes
they don't need to be told tactically what to do,

(47:16):
like hey, here's what you need to do, go get
a counselor, or they just need to know that you
are there.

Speaker 3 (47:23):
Someone cares absolutely. So yeah, wow, Ryan, that's pretty powerful.

Speaker 1 (47:29):
We can try to care.

Speaker 3 (47:31):
Yeah, when you can make that kind of a difference
with your kids and then you see it come back
around and you're like, oh wow, because we don't always
know if what we say impacts them at all or
if they notice or care.

Speaker 1 (47:42):
Well, most feels like it doesn't. Yeah, Like there's times
that I feel like I'm just talking to like, oh.

Speaker 3 (47:50):
Yeah, myself, especially with teenagers. Oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:54):
So so yeah, you're right when those and it's happened
with people along the way, but with your with your kids,
it's just a different impact on you. And I think
that that is missing a lot of times from the
world today. Is that just the fact that it's really
not that hard to just simply be there for someone

(48:16):
or just show just little.

Speaker 3 (48:18):
Little act of kindnesses. Yeah, it's not.

Speaker 1 (48:21):
That hard to just care.

Speaker 2 (48:23):
Yeah, And so that would be my advice, Like when
there are people going through hard things, it's just like, hey,
I'm here, if you need anything, just let me know.
Or if I do have like, I'll refer I love quotes,
so I'll refer people to that kind of stuff, like, hey,
here's something that helped me get through a similar time
in my life.

Speaker 1 (48:41):
That kind of stuff is sort of what my go
to is.

Speaker 3 (48:44):
You've got an amazing heart, Ryan, you really do. I
think it's it's cool and not that people wouldn't have
known that about you, but it's it's it's really inspiring
to hear more of your story and where you come from.

Speaker 1 (48:55):
I thank you, Thank you for making me cry again.

Speaker 3 (49:00):
Just trust me.

Speaker 1 (49:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (49:03):
No, there's there's a lot of guys that come on
and they go, oh wow, didn't know that was gonna happen.

Speaker 1 (49:07):
So, and it doesn't matter who I'm telling, like my lieutenant.

Speaker 2 (49:10):
I have a really good relationship with my lieutenant at
the firehouse, and he has a son similar to Max's age,
and so we have a lot of these conversations. And
I told him like, by now, I know I'm going
to cry every time, but at that time I didn't.
I was like, all right, like I can at least
tell Mikey this and just start crying.

Speaker 1 (49:27):
I'm like, gosh, dang, I can't. I cannot literally cannot
tell this story without being emotional.

Speaker 3 (49:34):
So that's okay, Yeah, hey, it's it that and that
also is nothing to be ashamed about. And I think
that's something that gets suppressed a lot in our society,
where tough guys can't, you know, big firefighters, football players,
you can't show emotion and because that's a sign of weakness.
Well it's not. It's okay, No, yeah, I agree, I agree,
It's totally okay. Ryan, thank you for the time. I
appreciate you saying yes, even if you felt like you

(49:54):
had to say yes. No.

Speaker 1 (49:55):
I actually I actually looked forward to this one. I
like this one, good good.

Speaker 3 (49:59):
All right, Well, appreciate you and thanks so much. Sure anytime,
Thank you, Ryan. New episodes of Cut, Traded, Fired, Retired
are released on Tuesdays. Please follow and download this podcast
wherever you listen to podcasts, and keep up on new
releases by following on Twitter and Instagram at ctf our
podcast and also on the website ctfurpodcast dot com. I'm

(50:20):
your host, Susie Wargen. To learn more about me, visit
susiewargin dot com. Thanks so much for listening, and until
next time, please be careful, be safe, and be kind.
Take care