November 14, 2025 • 39 mins
A delightful chat with an iconic fixture of the Kansas City running community Gary Gribble. The Pennsylvania native had a successful sales career before starting his line of area running stores in his forties, a successful pasion project for a man who ran marathons in every state. A genial and enjoyable success story well told!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to the Danny Clinkscale Reasonably Irreverent podcast, insightful and
witty commentary, probing interviews and detours from the beaten path.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Welcome to Kansas City Profiles, presented by Easton Roofing. And
about a month and a half ago, I had the
opportunity to go to and visit with a group of
runners who meet on a regular basis every month once
a month, and they get together for what's called the
Doctor Pepper Breakfast, and they just sit around and talk
and have a coffee or whatever. And they are long,
(00:36):
longtime runners. And among that group as Steve Fuller, who
we did a podcast with about a month ago and won.
Gary Gribbles anonymous with the running community in Kansas City
with his Gary Gribble running stores and he had five
of them eventually. He was born in Pennsylvania, grew up
in Pennsylvania, ended up working for Hallmark for sixteen years
(00:57):
in Baltimore, Atlanta and Kansas City, and after six years
of working for Hallmark here in Kansas City, decided to
want to branch out on his own. He was an
avid runner and he decided to start a running store
one on Ward park Way. It worked and eventually expanded
to Kansas City, Lee Summit, Overland Park, Lawrence, and Topeka.
If you ever have had any interest in running, you
(01:20):
know the name Gary Gribble. He has an interesting story
a great personality. He was elected in the first class
of the Running Store Hall of Fame. He's competed in
marathons in every state and run a total of over
one hundred marathons. Retired now and happily so sold his
stores in twenty fourteen. The stores are now called fleet Feet,
(01:40):
although many people still call them Gary Gribble, and we
are pleased to have the time to visit with Gary Gribble.
Our Kansas City Profile presented by Eastern Roofing.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
More of Danny's Reasonably Irreverend podcast after this.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
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Staying active and being active is part of a healthy
lifestyle and something to make you happy, but also maintaining
(03:47):
the level of fitness so that you can do it
is important.
Speaker 5 (03:50):
We all want to perform better, whether we're ten moving
on to our next level of sports or whether we're
fifty wanting to maintain those sports. Staying in motion is
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If our motion isn't balanced with our muscles, with our
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Speaker 2 (04:13):
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Speaker 5 (04:16):
Lots of different touches and techniques. So if you're used
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do all that at the eight locations of ASFCA. If
you'd like to join these and other fine sponsors and
market your business to Kansas City's number one variety podcast,
(04:49):
contact us at Danny at Danny clinkscale dot com. Look
forward to working with you. Gary came from a big family,
born in Altoona, Pennsylvania, one of h children. Where did
you stack up in the lineup?
Speaker 6 (05:02):
I actually, Danny was number three, and we're not Catholic either, Presbyterian.
Speaker 7 (05:09):
We're having eight kids.
Speaker 6 (05:10):
I was number three, three boys in a row, and
then and then we had our first sister.
Speaker 7 (05:16):
I was third.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Well that's cool. What were the age here? Were they
all you know, boom boom boom boom or was it
spread out?
Speaker 7 (05:23):
Yes?
Speaker 6 (05:24):
Yes, Danny, even though we weren't Catholic, we had we
had them. I think we were born like thirty seven,
thirty eight, thirty nine, forty and then forty two and
then forty three. Wow.
Speaker 8 (05:37):
Wow wow wow.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
So in a big family like that, tell me what
was like life was like in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 6 (05:45):
You know, I was born there but really didn't stay
there very long. Moved from south central Pennsylvania, but I
stayed in Pennsylvania. It was like, it was great, It
was fun. I really appreciated a big part of a
big family. I always had two older brothers to make
sure that I was traveling in the right direction, and
it was just, you know, it's a good role models.
Speaker 7 (06:05):
So I feel very lucky.
Speaker 6 (06:06):
And then the fourth child that our family had was
a girl, so I was her big brother and we
kind of stay close. And I also stay closed with
a brother that was a year over than May. So
it was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Really, what were your sports minded when you were a kid?
What did you like to do?
Speaker 6 (06:24):
Yeah, I was I liked the Philadelphia Phillies, but my
dad was from Pittsburgh Pittsburgh area, so I had the
roof of the Steelers a little bit and the Pirates,
but I really liked sports. My dad in his professional
human movie theaters. He would go to Philly to buy
movies for his theaters, and we would he would take
along a couple of us to Philly and if the
(06:47):
Phillies were town.
Speaker 7 (06:47):
He would take us to Shide Park.
Speaker 6 (06:50):
Actually saw Connie max In live in the in the stadium,
you know, So.
Speaker 7 (06:54):
It was it was a lot of fun.
Speaker 6 (06:56):
Plus growing up in a town called Shippensburg where I
really grew up. Shippenberg has a university. Then it was
called Shippensburg State Teachers College. Right now it's Shippensburg University
and the rulban. When I was younger, it was probably
four to six thousand, and now it's like twenty to
twenty four thousand.
Speaker 8 (07:15):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
So what was it like being the son of a
theater owner? That must have been kind of you missed
to get some fun perks out of that and things
like that.
Speaker 7 (07:23):
We know we did. Dan answered, that's a good question.
You know.
Speaker 6 (07:27):
My dad had in Shippensburg. That was one of the
theaters that he owned. And I started to work for
him in sixth grade and we sold we sold popcorn, candy.
One brother took tickets and the other brother sold tickets.
So I was the guy that worked in the candy
and popcorn counter and it was really and we did
that from sixth grade to like eighth grade until we
(07:48):
sold the theaters.
Speaker 7 (07:49):
Oh fun, a lot of fun.
Speaker 8 (07:51):
So that's sort of a precursor of the future.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Your dad was a theater owner and ended up selling
his theaters, and we'll get to the part where you
do the same thing later on.
Speaker 8 (07:59):
So that's of cool. I know you were, I know
you were a wrestler. Was that? Was that your prime sport?
Speaker 7 (08:06):
Yeah? I was. I.
Speaker 6 (08:07):
I My older brothers played football, and I wanted to
play football too, but I wrestled ninety five and in
ninth grade, so I was. I was kind of like
getting lost in the shuffle, and the basketball coach took
me from the basketball court where I was trying to
make the team, and he walked me over to the
wrestling room and he told the wrestling coach, hey, I
got a wrestler for you. So right, that's how I
(08:30):
got to wrestle. But wrestling was really it's a it's
a it's a great sport. It's a different it's a
hard sport. You gotta work hard, moving and weight. But
it also keeps you out of trouble growing up, not
that I was, you know, it just kept me from
like drinking or staying out late and then and probably
spending more time with the books.
Speaker 7 (08:48):
But wrestling was a great sport for me.
Speaker 6 (08:50):
And I also, you know, from wrestling in high school
all four years I had different weight classes.
Speaker 7 (08:55):
Ninety five, hundred and three hundred and twelve und.
Speaker 6 (08:58):
Twenty, so it was it was a really good and
my older brothers also wrestled, so it was kind of
fun that way.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Now, you would go to the hometown college, were you
ever considering doing anything else or what was the reasoning?
I was just close to home expenses. What was it like?
Speaker 6 (09:14):
Well, you know, growing up in a town that had
a college, and I always assumed that I would go
to Shippensburg. I was offered as a wrestling scholarship at Gettysburg,
but the cost even with a scholarship to Gettysburg and
Gettysburg was about thirty miles away. I decided to stay
in town and go to Shippensburg, and I had a
(09:36):
wrestling scholarship at Shippensburg. They paid for the books intuition,
so that was a better deal for me. Plus geographically,
I lived right next to the college, so it was
a great influence. And being a university that teaches you
how to become a teacher, I had student teachers. Danny
from my kindergarten up to my senior year. We had
up before, tons of student teachers to help us through school.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
I went to college a couple of years, and you
wrestled there, but then a time for the army duty
to talk about the interruption of your college life that way.
Speaker 7 (10:10):
Well, I went to college.
Speaker 6 (10:11):
I started college, and being eighteen and nineteen years old,
the thing that came first for me in college was
to wrestle, and secondly was I had part time job.
I had a two part time job for my eighth
grade for my sophomore year in college, and that kind
of came second. And school and studying in school and
things wasn't a high priority, and my grades were not
(10:35):
that great, and the dean told me that Gary, I
don't care how good of a wrestler you are, You've
got to get your grades up. So I decided that
I should take some time off, and I.
Speaker 7 (10:45):
Decided to win the army.
Speaker 6 (10:47):
I had to my two older brothers, who are both
in the one was in the Navy and the other
one was in the army.
Speaker 7 (10:53):
So I joined the Army. And I'm really glad.
Speaker 6 (10:56):
I did do that then because it helped me the
three years helped me grow up and learn the importance
of doing the right things in life. And then I
always thought the whole three years and I counted from
day one to today, twelve hundred days in the Army,
that I would get out and finish college. And then
luckily the gi Will passed and I had a chance
(11:16):
to get my college paid for. So I finished college.
And when I finished my senior year, I student taught,
thinking I would be a school teacher, and I student
taught Civics in a junior high and I liked it.
Speaker 7 (11:28):
It was fun.
Speaker 6 (11:29):
My co operative teacher was a great guy, and he
said to me, Jerry, you're a really good teacher. You're
going to get an A and student teaching. But I
think you are a salesman. You are someone who likes
to meet the public and do things like that. I
think you should consider getting a job selling. And that
kind of weighed on my mind, and I decided to
(11:50):
do that, not to teach, but to get a job
at selling selling products.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Well, pretty soon you found your home, which would be
your home in three different places. With home, what was
the route to there?
Speaker 7 (12:02):
Yeah? Well, I.
Speaker 6 (12:04):
Had several jobs working for companies that sold to grocery
stores for about two years. And so then that kind
of taught me how to be more of a salesman,
to listen more and talk less, you know. And then
I saw an advertisement advertisement for to sell greeting cards,
and I thought, selling greeting cards.
Speaker 7 (12:22):
Who would do something like that?
Speaker 6 (12:25):
But I lived in Baltimore, and I went to the
employment agency and the agents of the employment agency said, Gary,
your homemark material, you should interview with Hallmark.
Speaker 7 (12:34):
And I kind of resisted. I said, I.
Speaker 6 (12:36):
Don't want to sell greeting cars. And so I had
an interview and I liked the person that I talked to,
and then I got hired by Allmarket and you know,
in nineteen sixty eight, and moved from Baltimore where I was,
I was concerned with local things. And then when I
moved to Atlanta, I was in a regional office. I
was a regional training manager there, which kind of with
(12:58):
my background of student teaching and teaching helped. And then
I moved on to Kansas City and I had a
national job in Kansas City, and I stayed in Kansas City.
I love Kansas City. It's a ways from my home
in Pennsylvania. But Pennsylvanship of it. But Kansas City is
a great town. I love it and I'll be here
the rest of my life.
Speaker 8 (13:19):
And what year was it. How old were you when
you moved to Kansas City.
Speaker 6 (13:23):
I was about thirty, probably thirty eight or thirty nine.
And then I left Hallmark at age forty three, and
that's when I got a job with with Hallmark when
I was like age forty three in nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
So by this point I assumed that you started a family.
What was the what was the personal side of the
side of it as you were carving out a career
in sales.
Speaker 6 (13:49):
Yeah, I had and with hall Markets, but they're really
good treating families and things like that.
Speaker 7 (13:56):
I had two children and they're grown now.
Speaker 6 (14:00):
A daughter first, she's a school teacher, and when she
graduated from KU, she went onto the Peace Corps and
spent three years in South America and learning Spanish. And
my son lives in Saint Louis and he is a
maintenance person for elevators and things, elevators and escalators and
things like that. So one lives in Saint Louis and
(14:22):
the other lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Speaker 8 (14:25):
Oh that's cool.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
So you worked for Hallmark for sixteen years and you're
about forty five years old at this point in time.
What led you to start to think about starting your
own business?
Speaker 6 (14:38):
Well, you know, Davy, I think in everybody's life, sooner
or later they look around and they realize, hey, I'm
not going to go any further than this. I'm at
my plateau here with Allmark Cards, and they were a
great company to work for. And I went into personnel
and I said, you know, I've been here in Kansas
City now three years as the marketing person, in three
(15:00):
years as a personnel person, and I want to I
want to do something else. I want to open my
own business. Would you please allow me to continue with
Hallmark for ninety days. Let me look around and try
to get lines and things up, and then I will
come back to you at the end of ninety.
Speaker 7 (15:17):
Days and resign. And would you do that? And they
did that.
Speaker 6 (15:20):
They paid me, you know, and I kept my company
car for ninety days with Hallmark. I'll always have good
things to say about Hallmark because they treat their people well,
and they treated me well on my exit. So, you know,
I had to get financing. I had to get some
locations for stores. And in the back of my mind
then he was my father as a business guy, and
I could, you know, and working in the movies theaters
(15:43):
and watching him because his main office for his series
was in the town we lived, and I could see
how he worked and how he operated with his secretary,
and how he took notes and how he traveled all
that kind of stuff, and that was in the back
of my mind, and it really helped me as a
business person.
Speaker 7 (15:57):
I kind of had.
Speaker 6 (15:58):
Somebody looking over my shoes or kind of you know,
giving me a yes or no or whatever. So I
was lucky to have some experience working you know, at school,
in high school and in college, show working in a
movie theater, so that was kind of helping.
Speaker 7 (16:12):
That was kind of helped me out as a business person.
You know.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
More of Danny's Reasonably Irreverend podcast after this.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
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(16:43):
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(17:19):
Talk to Angelo, our brewer. He'll tell you everything, but
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If you'd like to join these and other great sponsors
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Speaker 2 (17:45):
Our guest is Gary Gribble. His name is synonymous with
running and running gear in Kansas City. Retired now and
his stores have moved been sold off to another company
very successfully, and we'll talk about that a little bit
later on. So when did you come to running? I,
you know, I in high school.
Speaker 6 (18:04):
I think when you play sports like and I'm so
old that they did not have in my high school.
Speaker 7 (18:09):
They didn't have cross.
Speaker 6 (18:10):
Country or track, right, but I had in college and
I wrestled. One of my best friends was the cross
country He was a capital of the cross country team
and we would run together and I would run with him,
and I thought, hey, this.
Speaker 7 (18:23):
Is kind of cool.
Speaker 6 (18:24):
But this is back in the early in the in
the early in the late sixties, there weren't running shoes
like we have now, and I ran in my wrestling
shoes and the coach reluctantly gave me a uniform for
cross country and he kind of gave them that look,
I know you're not going to finish.
Speaker 7 (18:42):
I know you won't.
Speaker 6 (18:43):
And I didn't because I got shin sprints, which is
something that because I didn't have the right shoes and
my cabs started to hurt, so I stopped across country.
But it was just something in my mind that I
that I really enjoyed doing. And then when I moved
from from a Balton more and I started to run
a little bit in Baltimore. But when I moved to Atlanta,
(19:05):
they have a July fourth race and the Peachtree Road Race,
which is one of the biggest, bigger RUSS road races
in the country, and I ran in that and it
was a thrill then because when I ran that in
like I think it was somewhere about sixty nine or
seventy there were like eight thousand runners, and I'm here,
I am a small guy from a small town Pennsylvania.
Speaker 7 (19:25):
I thought, boy, this is a lot.
Speaker 6 (19:26):
And today they have about sixty thousand runners at the
Peachtree road Race. But it was just very it was
really a fun thing to do, so I really enjoyed that.
So living in Kansas City, I ran a lot of
road races. My boss in Kansas City would say to
me once in a while, and he actually grew up
in Kansas My boss, he said, don't I give you
(19:47):
enough work to do?
Speaker 7 (19:47):
Why do you run so much.
Speaker 6 (19:49):
You know, it was kind of it was kind of funny,
but I thought, well, he crow so but we did,
you know, we did My boss and I the big
Boss I played.
Speaker 7 (19:59):
He was like six five six six. I played tennis
with it.
Speaker 6 (20:02):
We played tennis once or twice a week, and I
enjoyed that, but I still ran.
Speaker 7 (20:06):
So I read it in Atlanta. It was really a
lot of fun.
Speaker 6 (20:09):
And then luckily when I moved to Kansas City, my
neighbor was one of the Prime.
Speaker 7 (20:16):
Of Prime people in the Mid America running group Russ Nami,
and he and a friend like I soon met.
Speaker 6 (20:24):
They created Hospital Hill and you know, I've run that
race like twenty five thirty.
Speaker 7 (20:29):
Times, you know, every year.
Speaker 6 (20:30):
So I was lucky to have friends that lived nearby
in Kansas City, which really started me running.
Speaker 7 (20:38):
More and more and more.
Speaker 6 (20:39):
And then I met I met some people that owned
running stores that when I lived in Atlanta, and I
kind of thought about it, This might be an idea
to try sometime, you know. And then when I moved
here and I could see, hey, the handwritings on the wall,
this time it was time to look around and try
something else. I just it was kind of scary to
do to quit a job where you have a company car,
(21:02):
you make good money, you get expenses in the job
you have, and I had a title national National account manager,
so it's a pretty good job to quit all that
to walk away and get no income and and and
open a retail store, and you're shelling out half your
money that you saved from the company you work with, Palmart.
So I had to spend like half my money to
(21:23):
open a retail store. And it was kind of scary
at first, and I just I actually, for the first
six months, I didn't pay myself anything, just so I
could get by and make sure. So I made it,
and it was a lot of fun. It was a
lot of learning and all that kind of stuff, you know.
And I got a chance to meet other guys like myself.
I think in a lot of the major cities across
(21:46):
the United States there are people like me that open
up running stores, you know. And I became good friends
because there's a we would meet once a year, and
I would meet friends like in Cincinnati and Chicago and
in Dallas and in Denver, and we would talk shop
and things like that. So there's there there are guys
(22:06):
like me in most of the major cities. However, now
they are the age, they're in their seventies or eighties,
and they too are selling their story. And sleet Feed
has picked up a lot of the stores. Fleet Feed
is a change that sells just running stuff and they
they have like two hundred and ninety stores and my stores,
(22:28):
my store, I have a store in Johnson County at
Stowe Parks Center that's located at one hundred.
Speaker 7 (22:33):
And nineteenth Street. They're actually in the top five volume.
Speaker 6 (22:36):
Of their two hundred and ninety stores. So I'm really
proud of I'm really proud of that. But I you know, again,
I love that I owe to the friends that I
made and getting counsel and things like that, because people
would come in a lawyer, whatever whoever. They would talk shop,
talk and talk business with me.
Speaker 7 (22:52):
But also my dad was kind of looking over my shoulder.
Speaker 6 (22:54):
My dad died when I was thirteen years old, so
but that was enough time for me to pick up
a lot of business with savvy from him.
Speaker 7 (23:03):
So I really feel like I was lucky.
Speaker 8 (23:05):
You know, how.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Quickly did you find success and then start to expand.
Speaker 7 (23:14):
Wood Parkway.
Speaker 6 (23:15):
I just felt like and I lived, not that I
lived with Lenexa at that time, and I would drive
over and I just kept going and kept going, and
then I would meet people and I'd run with different
running groups, and I would probably say that I opened
Stowe Park, which is really the big the bigger Wayiam store.
I would say probably I opened an eighty four. In
(23:36):
an eighty eight or eighty nine, I opened up so Park,
but I opened it up in another location in Johnson County.
Speaker 7 (23:43):
Actually I opened seven stores.
Speaker 6 (23:45):
But closed too because I just you know the location, location, location, Danny.
But when I opened the store in Johnson County, I look,
I drove down the hill to pass Johnson County Community
College to Soul Park, which is a one hundred and
nineteenth in Caverer, and I thought, oh my gosh, I
should have come to this shopping center. So I knew
(24:06):
as soon as I would opened my second store in
eighty eight that I really should have opened down the street.
Speaker 7 (24:11):
So I then opened the store down the street.
Speaker 6 (24:13):
So it took about six years for me to create
and open the second store.
Speaker 7 (24:18):
And part of a job.
Speaker 6 (24:21):
That I have a Hallmark as a national account manager,
I worked with like Hallmarks company owned stores, so I
worked with them with some of the great retail stores
a Hallmarks Hallmark owners because they're right, they're they're great retailers.
And if you see a Hallmark store in the shopping
center in Kansas City or regional shopping center, they're usually
the highest volume stores in the shopping center. So I
(24:45):
learned a lot working with Hallmark and the company owned stores.
So I got a lot of knowledge in my back
pocket to do the right thing and and naming managers
where you don't like. I would go to my store
and Ward Parkway at least two or three times a week,
but that's also because.
Speaker 7 (25:01):
I lived near Ward Parkway. I live in.
Speaker 6 (25:04):
Brookside, and then when I opened Stowe Park I would
go there two or three times. So I was back
and forth with them. But Daniel, I was lucky. I
married Gal in nineteen eighty nine. She's a psychologist and
she got two brothers that are CPA's and her dad
was he was her day was owned a meat packing
(25:25):
plan or he managed what So she had some managerial
skills and she was really.
Speaker 7 (25:30):
Helpful to me. And I kind of think if I
wouldn't have hooked up and married her, I would.
Speaker 6 (25:34):
Not have had five stores because she was like I
was like being married to a personnel manager. She was
extremely helpful to me. She would not tell me what
to do and I'd say, hey, I've got this situation
coming up, and what do you think She would say,
well when we would talk it over. But it helped
me make a lot of good management decisions because with
the five stores, I had like sixty five to seventy employees,
(25:58):
you know, and it was it was fun and I
really do miss not having the people being around the
people baby.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Now as part of you know, the running community and everything.
You eventually not just started running races or did run races,
you started creating different races for other people to run in.
Speaker 6 (26:19):
Yeah, I did, and I tried to create races. That's
just a marketing thing, right. I created races around each
of the running stores, like in Tapainka, which we created
races there. In so Park, we created running running races
around each of the stores.
Speaker 7 (26:35):
And then in addition to that, I tried. I tried.
Speaker 6 (26:39):
I tried to I tried a triathlu and Baptist was
the only triathlu that we had in Kansas City, and
I tried. It was really a lot of fun. Coincidentally,
when I was in college. My freshman year, I took
the Red Cross Water Say at the Instructor's course and.
Speaker 7 (26:55):
It really helped me like a teaching swimming lessons.
Speaker 6 (26:58):
And and a friend of my dad, a lawyer in Newville,
he asked me, said, Gary, can you we want to
do some swimming classes at Dublin Gap Dublin Gap State
Park in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 7 (27:11):
And I said, well, let me meet you. So I
met him at the beach and the beach.
Speaker 6 (27:14):
Was probably about all about a quarter of a mile long,
and we had classes. We started classes there and I
did that early in the morning before I started my
regular job. And so I taught swimming lessons.
Speaker 7 (27:26):
But I had like.
Speaker 6 (27:27):
Twenty people that were instructors teaching swimming lessons from me
getting swimming to you know, to.
Speaker 7 (27:33):
To being a water safety person something like that.
Speaker 6 (27:36):
So anyway doing that, and then I thought, why don't
I try something? So I lived I lived there Shawley
Mission Park, and I thought to myself, I would drive
up there and look at the place and think, well,
I could do a traff on here, and there is
a hill that's pretty significant.
Speaker 7 (27:53):
So I went to Johnsay County Park and wreck and they.
Speaker 6 (27:56):
Said, hey, and apparently there were some trap on being
created in other parts of the country, in Michigan, in
Missouri and in Kansas, and they were all for it.
They said, but we're gonna, you know, we're gonna, we're
gonna want to governed it pretty closely.
Speaker 7 (28:11):
And I said, hey, that's fine.
Speaker 6 (28:12):
So I worked with him and I created the Shotted
Mission Traffon. And the first first year that we had it,
there were like three hundred and fifty triathletes that entered.
And here I am the race director, my first trafon
that I ever put on. And I couldn't wait until
you know, you've hit a trathon. You swim first, you
(28:32):
bike second, and you run third. I could not wait
until all the swimmers got out of the water. I
kept think of gosh, almighty, and I kept looking at
the bike rack thinking, and I hope all the bikes
are off the rack and gone. Then I know that
everybody is out of the water.
Speaker 7 (28:46):
Nobody ground right.
Speaker 8 (28:49):
That's funny.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
And of course you competed in a lot of things,
not just triathlons, but marathons, and then you kind of
made it a thing and you've you eventually ran marathons
in every state.
Speaker 6 (29:01):
Yeah, yeah, I did. I started that. That's not I
wouldn't recommend that from marriage. That's kind of hard on
marriage when you if you, if you, if I meet
a marathon in the back of my mind or a
person that's an ultra runner, I think, I wonder, I
think to myself, I wonder how their marriage is going,
because you spend a lot of time away from home
(29:21):
running a marathon like it most most people run on
us on Saturday or a Sunday. They run long what
is long, like three and a half four hours and
training just for have marathon, you've got to run at
least two or three twenty miles, so that takes quite
a long time. So that's it can be difficult on
the marriage.
Speaker 7 (29:40):
But I was lucky.
Speaker 6 (29:41):
I had a group of people and we met on
Metcalf on Saturday mornings John's Space Age Donuts store, and
we would run, you know, not twenty miles every Saturday,
but we would you know, work our way up from
like twelve or fourteen, sixty eighteen to twenty.
Speaker 7 (29:59):
And I had a couple guys that.
Speaker 6 (30:02):
Have since died, not from running, but one was a
lawyer and one was a doctor, and we ran like
thirty marathons together out of town and we would plan
like like we would.
Speaker 7 (30:14):
Plan, you know, where we're going to go.
Speaker 6 (30:16):
And sometimes Danny when we would go to places like
Baltimore and luckily New Jersey had a marathon and Maryland
had a marathon at the same time, so we would
run probably three or four times. We ran like two
marathons on a weekend, one on Saturday and one on Sunday,
(30:36):
you know, so just to try to because we knew that,
we started a goal of trying to run a marathon
in every state.
Speaker 7 (30:41):
So we started knocking off the states.
Speaker 6 (30:43):
And the three of us did that in a matter
of like eight to ten years by doing that. And
actually there's another fellow by the name is Steve Fuller
in Kansas City and he ran he's still running a
marathon right.
Speaker 7 (30:56):
I don't know how he does. He's unbelievable.
Speaker 6 (30:58):
He's runs down like three hundred marathons. But we did,
you know, the fifty one states. But I've done like
one hundred and six. And people say would say that
guy's crazy, that doesn't.
Speaker 7 (31:09):
He have a life?
Speaker 6 (31:10):
Why did he doing that? But being the runner of
a running store, being the owner of a running store.
I would have customers say to me, have you ever
run a marathon? It's kind of a challenge. I said yes,
and they say, yeah, but you haven't run Boston yet,
and I had. I had run it three times. It
was kind of a challenge, but it was kind of
a friendly challenge. So you really aren't a marathon or
(31:33):
until you run Boston. And then doing the triathlons. I
also did the triathlons that I created. I created traflons
at Shana Mission Park, Kansas City, Kansas, at the State
Park over there, and then the Bush Springs the traflon there,
and I just I like doing traflons, and so I
tried to get my PhD and doing traflons by doing
(31:55):
the iron Man's The iron I did The Iron Man,
but luckily I met and knew clothing salesman that sold
clothing Ironman clothing, and so being a retailer, I would
just say to hey, Joe, can you get me into
The Iron Man? He said, yeah, I've got a couple
free slots. I'll get you in, So I excuse me.
I got the end of The Ironman in nineteen eighty six,
(32:17):
and it was really a thrill. It was really it
was really exciting, you know. But the biggest thrill was
the first Metlin I ever did in New York City.
I did that in nineteen seventy eight. They were like
eight thousand people. So, but anyway, participating and being a retailer,
it kind of just came to be credit. But it
was kind of like get my master's degree or doctor
degree and running.
Speaker 8 (32:38):
Well.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
By the nineteen eighties, your stores were in the top
ten running stores for dealers.
Speaker 8 (32:43):
It was successful forever.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
I think anybody who has any thought of running and
running gear. Your name was synonymous with that in Kansas
City and had success for decades and did it and
obviously enjoyed it and did all the other things ancillary
to it. What was the process of deciding at you know,
you were about the age you probably should have maybe
retired already anyway, but you sold your stores in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 8 (33:07):
Tell us about the process of that.
Speaker 6 (33:10):
Well, you know, I business was fine, the bills roll
getting paid, and business was good. But I was at
the time seventy four seventy five, and I felt like, hey,
you know, and my wife helped me.
Speaker 7 (33:23):
She helped me make the decision.
Speaker 6 (33:24):
She's wiser in many ways than I am about some things.
And I thought, you know, and I and luckily corporate
there were corporations that were buying running stories and I
had I got an offer from one, and then I
got an offer from another, and I decided to tell
Dan because it was this, you know, I'd been doing
it for thirty years and at you know, most people
(33:45):
retired when they're in their sixties.
Speaker 7 (33:47):
Right, And I love the hours I was.
Speaker 6 (33:49):
I mean, they were complained about the hours, and my
wife would still works she's seventy three. But I just thought, yeah,
I'm going to sell, and I sold, and it's been
it's been a fun thing.
Speaker 7 (33:59):
You know.
Speaker 6 (33:59):
It's been almost eleven years since I sold the stores,
and I saw have many fond memories, you know, and
I've made a lot of friends. I still when I'm
out walking the things, I'll see people and they'll they'll
know who I am. But I'm a kind I'm kind
of a low key guy, though I don't like you know, publishment.
I actually had I had a when I opened my stores.
I was just gonna call I actually was going to
(34:19):
do a franchise.
Speaker 7 (34:21):
From from a from a.
Speaker 6 (34:22):
Place out of Atlanta, and I had a running friend
who was a marketing guy for a TV thing, and
he said, no, you've.
Speaker 7 (34:28):
Got to put your name first. And I said, I
can't do that. People people will think you're bragging, and
I don't want to do that.
Speaker 6 (34:34):
And then he said, Gary, you got to do that.
You got to put your name first. And I was
pretty apprehensive about doing that. But I'm really glad I
did it because I just talked to someone that works
in one of the stores and my former stores, and
they say, we still call it Gary Ribbles, and the
customers con.
Speaker 7 (34:50):
Men, well, they call and call it Gary Ribbles. So anyway,
we can see. It was a great place for me
to land. And uh, it's been. It's been my life
more enjoyable.
Speaker 8 (35:00):
Dabby, How is retirement treated you?
Speaker 7 (35:04):
It's great, it's great.
Speaker 6 (35:05):
I have a you know, I have two kids and
another are here. My wife and I adopted in addition
to the two existed and children I had, we adopted.
Speaker 7 (35:15):
A a little.
Speaker 6 (35:16):
Girl from China and now she's thirty one and she's
working has a good company, working for a car working
for merchades overseas Stuttgart.
Speaker 7 (35:26):
And I read a lot.
Speaker 6 (35:27):
My wife reads a lot, you know, I kind of
get out and walk and all that kind of stuff,
and life is good, very good, Danny, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (35:34):
Well.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
I had the pleasure of meeting with your running group
of veteran runners, and they're a testimony to running because
they are all pretty elderly with a couple of exceptions,
and they all look great, and they all look healthy.
And you guys have fun once a month gathering and
telling some stories.
Speaker 7 (35:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (35:54):
Yeah, and it is fun, and they're all great guys.
They're all givers there and we're still learning. I mean,
so there's one one or two of the guys that
are you know that's still run. A fellow that I mentioned,
t Fuller, he's like seventy seven or seventy eight.
Speaker 7 (36:08):
I think you probably knew. Was like, hey, he's fretter
than me. Yeah, he's still there. He's still reading there.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Yeah, we did we did one and we did one
of these with him about a month ago. So it
was a fun story to tell you.
Speaker 7 (36:18):
He's a great guy.
Speaker 6 (36:19):
He really very friendly, and he's the kind of guy
that that we'd be running and say, hey, Steve, I'm
looking at the lease in the in topeaker, I'm looking
some for Lawrence.
Speaker 7 (36:28):
What what do you think? What do you what do
you think about this?
Speaker 9 (36:30):
Or that?
Speaker 7 (36:30):
That part because I being a runner and already as
a running for a retailer, you kind of got to
get you know.
Speaker 6 (36:36):
I think I was as much a finding good location
as there wasn't anything. But you know this, I learned that,
and you learn about real estate. Of course I had somewhat.
I did some of that some of that when I
worked for Hallmark in the past. But the runners can
be really very helpful to you if you want to
ask questions about business questions or or training questions or whatever,
(36:56):
you know. Like like in nineteen eighty five or eighty six,
there was one of my employees.
Speaker 7 (37:02):
He was a frustrated school teacher.
Speaker 6 (37:03):
And his name is Eladio Valdez, right, And he was
a teacher, and he said, here, I want to I
want to work in your store. I said, look, you're
making X amount of money. That's about what you're going
to make when you're working in the store. He said, yeah,
I know, but I'm frustrated. I don't want to teach.
And I said, well, Lanio, you're you're a coach. You're
a runner, let's start a running program. So we created
(37:24):
He and I we created a running program called Running
Runner's Edge, and he's had the Runners Edge out since
the mid eighties and we've had like up to twenty
or two hundred people in the group that would meet
on Saturdays. And the running group goes all over Kansas
City on a Saturday, will meet in different places, so
(37:45):
you learn the geography of different places. And when they
would come to my stores like Stole Park or Ward Parkway,
the store at Ward Parkway may do on a businy Saturday,
twelve to fifteen thousand dollars at retail.
Speaker 7 (38:00):
When the running group would run from Ward Parkway.
Speaker 6 (38:02):
Before my store opened before ten am, we would do
that ten thousand dollars from the running group, right, But
I did. I did pass on a twenty percent discount
when they were in the store, just when they were stored,
which was it was a good thing.
Speaker 7 (38:15):
So that was that was one of the best things
I think we ever did, too, was the after Brunner's
Hedge program.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
And looking back, there are many things you did. You
must be able to reflect proudly on all the things
that you've done so far.
Speaker 7 (38:27):
Yeah, it's been a thrill.
Speaker 6 (38:30):
It has been. And with the background I had, you know,
in working with some of the jobs at the Hallmark
as a salesman, as a training manager, as a regional
training manager, then as a personnel manager of just learning to.
Speaker 7 (38:42):
Listen more and talk less and all that kind of stuff.
It's been.
Speaker 6 (38:45):
It's been helpful to me and my partner. My wife,
she's been extremely helpful. She doesn't work in the store.
She never came to the store, but she would. I
was like being married to a personnel manager. And I'm
not trying to put down personnel.
Speaker 7 (38:57):
Manager, but she did a great job of helping me.
So I had heard beheld with me.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
We hope you enjoyed the latest Danny Klinkscale Reasonably Irreverent podcast.
Come back soon for something fresh and new. This podcast
was made possible by our great sponsors like Eastern Roofing,
where integrity matters. Joe Spiker and his team are the
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(39:25):
with honesty and craftsmanship. Visit them at Easternroofing dot com.
Welcome to the Danny Clinkscale Reasonably Irreverent podcast, insightful and
witty commentary, probing interviews and detours from the beaten path.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Welcome to Kansas City Profiles, presented by Easton Roofing. And
about a month and a half ago, I had the
opportunity to go to and visit with a group of
runners who meet on a regular basis every month once
a month, and they get together for what's called the
Doctor Pepper Breakfast, and they just sit around and talk
and have a coffee or whatever. And they are long,
(00:36):
longtime runners. And among that group as Steve Fuller, who
we did a podcast with about a month ago and won.
Gary Gribbles anonymous with the running community in Kansas City
with his Gary Gribble running stores and he had five
of them eventually. He was born in Pennsylvania, grew up
in Pennsylvania, ended up working for Hallmark for sixteen years
(00:57):
in Baltimore, Atlanta and Kansas City, and after six years
of working for Hallmark here in Kansas City, decided to
want to branch out on his own. He was an
avid runner and he decided to start a running store
one on Ward park Way. It worked and eventually expanded
to Kansas City, Lee Summit, Overland Park, Lawrence, and Topeka.
If you ever have had any interest in running, you
(01:20):
know the name Gary Gribble. He has an interesting story
a great personality. He was elected in the first class
of the Running Store Hall of Fame. He's competed in
marathons in every state and run a total of over
one hundred marathons. Retired now and happily so sold his
stores in twenty fourteen. The stores are now called fleet Feet,
(01:40):
although many people still call them Gary Gribble, and we
are pleased to have the time to visit with Gary Gribble.
Our Kansas City Profile presented by Eastern Roofing.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
More of Danny's Reasonably Irreverend podcast after this.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
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Speaker 5 (03:50):
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If our motion isn't balanced with our muscles, with our
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contact us at Danny at Danny clinkscale dot com. Look
forward to working with you. Gary came from a big family,
born in Altoona, Pennsylvania, one of h children. Where did
you stack up in the lineup?
Speaker 6 (05:02):
I actually, Danny was number three, and we're not Catholic either, Presbyterian.
Speaker 7 (05:09):
We're having eight kids.
Speaker 6 (05:10):
I was number three, three boys in a row, and
then and then we had our first sister.
Speaker 7 (05:16):
I was third.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Well that's cool. What were the age here? Were they
all you know, boom boom boom boom or was it
spread out?
Speaker 7 (05:23):
Yes?
Speaker 6 (05:24):
Yes, Danny, even though we weren't Catholic, we had we
had them. I think we were born like thirty seven,
thirty eight, thirty nine, forty and then forty two and
then forty three. Wow.
Speaker 8 (05:37):
Wow wow wow.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
So in a big family like that, tell me what
was like life was like in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 6 (05:45):
You know, I was born there but really didn't stay
there very long. Moved from south central Pennsylvania, but I
stayed in Pennsylvania. It was like, it was great, It
was fun. I really appreciated a big part of a
big family. I always had two older brothers to make
sure that I was traveling in the right direction, and
it was just, you know, it's a good role models.
Speaker 7 (06:05):
So I feel very lucky.
Speaker 6 (06:06):
And then the fourth child that our family had was
a girl, so I was her big brother and we
kind of stay close. And I also stay closed with
a brother that was a year over than May. So
it was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Really, what were your sports minded when you were a kid?
What did you like to do?
Speaker 6 (06:24):
Yeah, I was I liked the Philadelphia Phillies, but my
dad was from Pittsburgh Pittsburgh area, so I had the
roof of the Steelers a little bit and the Pirates,
but I really liked sports. My dad in his professional
human movie theaters. He would go to Philly to buy
movies for his theaters, and we would he would take
along a couple of us to Philly and if the
(06:47):
Phillies were town.
Speaker 7 (06:47):
He would take us to Shide Park.
Speaker 6 (06:50):
Actually saw Connie max In live in the in the stadium,
you know, So.
Speaker 7 (06:54):
It was it was a lot of fun.
Speaker 6 (06:56):
Plus growing up in a town called Shippensburg where I
really grew up. Shippenberg has a university. Then it was
called Shippensburg State Teachers College. Right now it's Shippensburg University
and the rulban. When I was younger, it was probably
four to six thousand, and now it's like twenty to
twenty four thousand.
Speaker 8 (07:15):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
So what was it like being the son of a
theater owner? That must have been kind of you missed
to get some fun perks out of that and things
like that.
Speaker 7 (07:23):
We know we did. Dan answered, that's a good question.
You know.
Speaker 6 (07:27):
My dad had in Shippensburg. That was one of the
theaters that he owned. And I started to work for
him in sixth grade and we sold we sold popcorn, candy.
One brother took tickets and the other brother sold tickets.
So I was the guy that worked in the candy
and popcorn counter and it was really and we did
that from sixth grade to like eighth grade until we
(07:48):
sold the theaters.
Speaker 7 (07:49):
Oh fun, a lot of fun.
Speaker 8 (07:51):
So that's sort of a precursor of the future.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Your dad was a theater owner and ended up selling
his theaters, and we'll get to the part where you
do the same thing later on.
Speaker 8 (07:59):
So that's of cool. I know you were, I know
you were a wrestler. Was that? Was that your prime sport?
Speaker 7 (08:06):
Yeah? I was. I.
Speaker 6 (08:07):
I My older brothers played football, and I wanted to
play football too, but I wrestled ninety five and in
ninth grade, so I was. I was kind of like
getting lost in the shuffle, and the basketball coach took
me from the basketball court where I was trying to
make the team, and he walked me over to the
wrestling room and he told the wrestling coach, hey, I
got a wrestler for you. So right, that's how I
(08:30):
got to wrestle. But wrestling was really it's a it's
a it's a great sport. It's a different it's a
hard sport. You gotta work hard, moving and weight. But
it also keeps you out of trouble growing up, not
that I was, you know, it just kept me from
like drinking or staying out late and then and probably
spending more time with the books.
Speaker 7 (08:48):
But wrestling was a great sport for me.
Speaker 6 (08:50):
And I also, you know, from wrestling in high school
all four years I had different weight classes.
Speaker 7 (08:55):
Ninety five, hundred and three hundred and twelve und.
Speaker 6 (08:58):
Twenty, so it was it was a really good and
my older brothers also wrestled, so it was kind of
fun that way.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Now, you would go to the hometown college, were you
ever considering doing anything else or what was the reasoning?
I was just close to home expenses. What was it like?
Speaker 6 (09:14):
Well, you know, growing up in a town that had
a college, and I always assumed that I would go
to Shippensburg. I was offered as a wrestling scholarship at Gettysburg,
but the cost even with a scholarship to Gettysburg and
Gettysburg was about thirty miles away. I decided to stay
in town and go to Shippensburg, and I had a
(09:36):
wrestling scholarship at Shippensburg. They paid for the books intuition,
so that was a better deal for me. Plus geographically,
I lived right next to the college, so it was
a great influence. And being a university that teaches you
how to become a teacher, I had student teachers. Danny
from my kindergarten up to my senior year. We had
up before, tons of student teachers to help us through school.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
I went to college a couple of years, and you
wrestled there, but then a time for the army duty
to talk about the interruption of your college life that way.
Speaker 7 (10:10):
Well, I went to college.
Speaker 6 (10:11):
I started college, and being eighteen and nineteen years old,
the thing that came first for me in college was
to wrestle, and secondly was I had part time job.
I had a two part time job for my eighth
grade for my sophomore year in college, and that kind
of came second. And school and studying in school and
things wasn't a high priority, and my grades were not
(10:35):
that great, and the dean told me that Gary, I
don't care how good of a wrestler you are, You've
got to get your grades up. So I decided that
I should take some time off, and I.
Speaker 7 (10:45):
Decided to win the army.
Speaker 6 (10:47):
I had to my two older brothers, who are both
in the one was in the Navy and the other
one was in the army.
Speaker 7 (10:53):
So I joined the Army. And I'm really glad.
Speaker 6 (10:56):
I did do that then because it helped me the
three years helped me grow up and learn the importance
of doing the right things in life. And then I
always thought the whole three years and I counted from
day one to today, twelve hundred days in the Army,
that I would get out and finish college. And then
luckily the gi Will passed and I had a chance
(11:16):
to get my college paid for. So I finished college.
And when I finished my senior year, I student taught,
thinking I would be a school teacher, and I student
taught Civics in a junior high and I liked it.
Speaker 7 (11:28):
It was fun.
Speaker 6 (11:29):
My co operative teacher was a great guy, and he
said to me, Jerry, you're a really good teacher. You're
going to get an A and student teaching. But I
think you are a salesman. You are someone who likes
to meet the public and do things like that. I
think you should consider getting a job selling. And that
kind of weighed on my mind, and I decided to
(11:50):
do that, not to teach, but to get a job
at selling selling products.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Well, pretty soon you found your home, which would be
your home in three different places. With home, what was
the route to there?
Speaker 7 (12:02):
Yeah? Well, I.
Speaker 6 (12:04):
Had several jobs working for companies that sold to grocery
stores for about two years. And so then that kind
of taught me how to be more of a salesman,
to listen more and talk less, you know. And then
I saw an advertisement advertisement for to sell greeting cards,
and I thought, selling greeting cards.
Speaker 7 (12:22):
Who would do something like that?
Speaker 6 (12:25):
But I lived in Baltimore, and I went to the
employment agency and the agents of the employment agency said, Gary,
your homemark material, you should interview with Hallmark.
Speaker 7 (12:34):
And I kind of resisted. I said, I.
Speaker 6 (12:36):
Don't want to sell greeting cars. And so I had
an interview and I liked the person that I talked to,
and then I got hired by Allmarket and you know,
in nineteen sixty eight, and moved from Baltimore where I was,
I was concerned with local things. And then when I
moved to Atlanta, I was in a regional office. I
was a regional training manager there, which kind of with
(12:58):
my background of student teaching and teaching helped. And then
I moved on to Kansas City and I had a
national job in Kansas City, and I stayed in Kansas City.
I love Kansas City. It's a ways from my home
in Pennsylvania. But Pennsylvanship of it. But Kansas City is
a great town. I love it and I'll be here
the rest of my life.
Speaker 8 (13:19):
And what year was it. How old were you when
you moved to Kansas City.
Speaker 6 (13:23):
I was about thirty, probably thirty eight or thirty nine.
And then I left Hallmark at age forty three, and
that's when I got a job with with Hallmark when
I was like age forty three in nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
So by this point I assumed that you started a family.
What was the what was the personal side of the
side of it as you were carving out a career
in sales.
Speaker 6 (13:49):
Yeah, I had and with hall Markets, but they're really
good treating families and things like that.
Speaker 7 (13:56):
I had two children and they're grown now.
Speaker 6 (14:00):
A daughter first, she's a school teacher, and when she
graduated from KU, she went onto the Peace Corps and
spent three years in South America and learning Spanish. And
my son lives in Saint Louis and he is a
maintenance person for elevators and things, elevators and escalators and
things like that. So one lives in Saint Louis and
(14:22):
the other lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Speaker 8 (14:25):
Oh that's cool.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
So you worked for Hallmark for sixteen years and you're
about forty five years old at this point in time.
What led you to start to think about starting your
own business?
Speaker 6 (14:38):
Well, you know, Davy, I think in everybody's life, sooner
or later they look around and they realize, hey, I'm
not going to go any further than this. I'm at
my plateau here with Allmark Cards, and they were a
great company to work for. And I went into personnel
and I said, you know, I've been here in Kansas
City now three years as the marketing person, in three
(15:00):
years as a personnel person, and I want to I
want to do something else. I want to open my
own business. Would you please allow me to continue with
Hallmark for ninety days. Let me look around and try
to get lines and things up, and then I will
come back to you at the end of ninety.
Speaker 7 (15:17):
Days and resign. And would you do that? And they
did that.
Speaker 6 (15:20):
They paid me, you know, and I kept my company
car for ninety days with Hallmark. I'll always have good
things to say about Hallmark because they treat their people well,
and they treated me well on my exit. So, you know,
I had to get financing. I had to get some
locations for stores. And in the back of my mind
then he was my father as a business guy, and
I could, you know, and working in the movies theaters
(15:43):
and watching him because his main office for his series
was in the town we lived, and I could see
how he worked and how he operated with his secretary,
and how he took notes and how he traveled all
that kind of stuff, and that was in the back
of my mind, and it really helped me as a
business person.
Speaker 7 (15:57):
I kind of had.
Speaker 6 (15:58):
Somebody looking over my shoes or kind of you know,
giving me a yes or no or whatever. So I
was lucky to have some experience working you know, at school,
in high school and in college, show working in a
movie theater, so that was kind of helping.
Speaker 7 (16:12):
That was kind of helped me out as a business person.
You know.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
More of Danny's Reasonably Irreverend podcast after this.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
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hate it when people start talking about Christmas before Thanksgiving?
Even arrives me too, But right now I'm that guy.
Call Eastern Roofing today and get on the schedule to
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off that ladder and let the pros hang your custom
(16:43):
holiday lights this year. Eastern Roofing integrity matters. It'll be
real nice, Clark.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
We're here with Matt Lewellen from the twenty third Street Brewery,
Hence Brewery. So beer is important and you've got great ones, Yes, we.
Speaker 9 (16:58):
Do, and we've got a great bruer, Angelo Ruiz has
been here for three years now and just Bruce, great
great beer, always something new on tap. It's hard to
say what our best beers are because he always has
a new beer coming out for the season. I was
asked earlier today what we have coming up next, and
I'm like, I don't know. Ask Angelo. Come inside the restaurant.
(17:19):
Talk to Angelo, our brewer. He'll tell you everything, but
he might say he doesn't know either. No matter what
it is, Danny, it's a great beer, though, and Angelo
brew is all kinds of great.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Beer, great beers, great food, great fun at the twenty
third Street Brewery, twenty third End Castle.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
If you'd like to join these and other great sponsors
and market your business to a growing and engaged audience,
contact us at Danni Clinkscale dot com look forward to
hearing from you.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Our guest is Gary Gribble. His name is synonymous with
running and running gear in Kansas City. Retired now and
his stores have moved been sold off to another company
very successfully, and we'll talk about that a little bit
later on. So when did you come to running? I,
you know, I in high school.
Speaker 6 (18:04):
I think when you play sports like and I'm so
old that they did not have in my high school.
Speaker 7 (18:09):
They didn't have cross.
Speaker 6 (18:10):
Country or track, right, but I had in college and
I wrestled. One of my best friends was the cross
country He was a capital of the cross country team
and we would run together and I would run with him,
and I thought, hey, this.
Speaker 7 (18:23):
Is kind of cool.
Speaker 6 (18:24):
But this is back in the early in the in
the early in the late sixties, there weren't running shoes
like we have now, and I ran in my wrestling
shoes and the coach reluctantly gave me a uniform for
cross country and he kind of gave them that look,
I know you're not going to finish.
Speaker 7 (18:42):
I know you won't.
Speaker 6 (18:43):
And I didn't because I got shin sprints, which is
something that because I didn't have the right shoes and
my cabs started to hurt, so I stopped across country.
But it was just something in my mind that I
that I really enjoyed doing. And then when I moved
from from a Balton more and I started to run
a little bit in Baltimore. But when I moved to Atlanta,
(19:05):
they have a July fourth race and the Peachtree Road Race,
which is one of the biggest, bigger RUSS road races
in the country, and I ran in that and it
was a thrill then because when I ran that in
like I think it was somewhere about sixty nine or
seventy there were like eight thousand runners, and I'm here,
I am a small guy from a small town Pennsylvania.
Speaker 7 (19:25):
I thought, boy, this is a lot.
Speaker 6 (19:26):
And today they have about sixty thousand runners at the
Peachtree road Race. But it was just very it was
really a fun thing to do, so I really enjoyed that.
So living in Kansas City, I ran a lot of
road races. My boss in Kansas City would say to
me once in a while, and he actually grew up
in Kansas My boss, he said, don't I give you
(19:47):
enough work to do?
Speaker 7 (19:47):
Why do you run so much.
Speaker 6 (19:49):
You know, it was kind of it was kind of funny,
but I thought, well, he crow so but we did,
you know, we did My boss and I the big
Boss I played.
Speaker 7 (19:59):
He was like six five six six. I played tennis
with it.
Speaker 6 (20:02):
We played tennis once or twice a week, and I
enjoyed that, but I still ran.
Speaker 7 (20:06):
So I read it in Atlanta. It was really a
lot of fun.
Speaker 6 (20:09):
And then luckily when I moved to Kansas City, my
neighbor was one of the Prime.
Speaker 7 (20:16):
Of Prime people in the Mid America running group Russ Nami,
and he and a friend like I soon met.
Speaker 6 (20:24):
They created Hospital Hill and you know, I've run that
race like twenty five thirty.
Speaker 7 (20:29):
Times, you know, every year.
Speaker 6 (20:30):
So I was lucky to have friends that lived nearby
in Kansas City, which really started me running.
Speaker 7 (20:38):
More and more and more.
Speaker 6 (20:39):
And then I met I met some people that owned
running stores that when I lived in Atlanta, and I
kind of thought about it, This might be an idea
to try sometime, you know. And then when I moved
here and I could see, hey, the handwritings on the wall,
this time it was time to look around and try
something else. I just it was kind of scary to
do to quit a job where you have a company car,
(21:02):
you make good money, you get expenses in the job
you have, and I had a title national National account manager,
so it's a pretty good job to quit all that
to walk away and get no income and and and
open a retail store, and you're shelling out half your
money that you saved from the company you work with, Palmart.
So I had to spend like half my money to
(21:23):
open a retail store. And it was kind of scary
at first, and I just I actually, for the first
six months, I didn't pay myself anything, just so I
could get by and make sure. So I made it,
and it was a lot of fun. It was a
lot of learning and all that kind of stuff, you know.
And I got a chance to meet other guys like myself.
I think in a lot of the major cities across
(21:46):
the United States there are people like me that open
up running stores, you know. And I became good friends
because there's a we would meet once a year, and
I would meet friends like in Cincinnati and Chicago and
in Dallas and in Denver, and we would talk shop
and things like that. So there's there there are guys
(22:06):
like me in most of the major cities. However, now
they are the age, they're in their seventies or eighties,
and they too are selling their story. And sleet Feed
has picked up a lot of the stores. Fleet Feed
is a change that sells just running stuff and they
they have like two hundred and ninety stores and my stores,
(22:28):
my store, I have a store in Johnson County at
Stowe Parks Center that's located at one hundred.
Speaker 7 (22:33):
And nineteenth Street. They're actually in the top five volume.
Speaker 6 (22:36):
Of their two hundred and ninety stores. So I'm really
proud of I'm really proud of that. But I you know, again,
I love that I owe to the friends that I
made and getting counsel and things like that, because people
would come in a lawyer, whatever whoever. They would talk shop,
talk and talk business with me.
Speaker 7 (22:52):
But also my dad was kind of looking over my shoulder.
Speaker 6 (22:54):
My dad died when I was thirteen years old, so
but that was enough time for me to pick up
a lot of business with savvy from him.
Speaker 7 (23:03):
So I really feel like I was lucky.
Speaker 8 (23:05):
You know, how.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Quickly did you find success and then start to expand.
Speaker 7 (23:14):
Wood Parkway.
Speaker 6 (23:15):
I just felt like and I lived, not that I
lived with Lenexa at that time, and I would drive
over and I just kept going and kept going, and
then I would meet people and I'd run with different
running groups, and I would probably say that I opened
Stowe Park, which is really the big the bigger Wayiam store.
I would say probably I opened an eighty four. In
(23:36):
an eighty eight or eighty nine, I opened up so Park,
but I opened it up in another location in Johnson County.
Speaker 7 (23:43):
Actually I opened seven stores.
Speaker 6 (23:45):
But closed too because I just you know the location, location, location, Danny.
But when I opened the store in Johnson County, I look,
I drove down the hill to pass Johnson County Community
College to Soul Park, which is a one hundred and
nineteenth in Caverer, and I thought, oh my gosh, I
should have come to this shopping center. So I knew
(24:06):
as soon as I would opened my second store in
eighty eight that I really should have opened down the street.
Speaker 7 (24:11):
So I then opened the store down the street.
Speaker 6 (24:13):
So it took about six years for me to create
and open the second store.
Speaker 7 (24:18):
And part of a job.
Speaker 6 (24:21):
That I have a Hallmark as a national account manager,
I worked with like Hallmarks company owned stores, so I
worked with them with some of the great retail stores
a Hallmarks Hallmark owners because they're right, they're they're great retailers.
And if you see a Hallmark store in the shopping
center in Kansas City or regional shopping center, they're usually
the highest volume stores in the shopping center. So I
(24:45):
learned a lot working with Hallmark and the company owned stores.
So I got a lot of knowledge in my back
pocket to do the right thing and and naming managers
where you don't like. I would go to my store
and Ward Parkway at least two or three times a week,
but that's also because.
Speaker 7 (25:01):
I lived near Ward Parkway. I live in.
Speaker 6 (25:04):
Brookside, and then when I opened Stowe Park I would
go there two or three times. So I was back
and forth with them. But Daniel, I was lucky. I
married Gal in nineteen eighty nine. She's a psychologist and
she got two brothers that are CPA's and her dad
was he was her day was owned a meat packing
(25:25):
plan or he managed what So she had some managerial
skills and she was really.
Speaker 7 (25:30):
Helpful to me. And I kind of think if I
wouldn't have hooked up and married her, I would.
Speaker 6 (25:34):
Not have had five stores because she was like I
was like being married to a personnel manager. She was
extremely helpful to me. She would not tell me what
to do and I'd say, hey, I've got this situation
coming up, and what do you think She would say,
well when we would talk it over. But it helped
me make a lot of good management decisions because with
the five stores, I had like sixty five to seventy employees,
(25:58):
you know, and it was it was fun and I
really do miss not having the people being around the
people baby.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Now as part of you know, the running community and everything.
You eventually not just started running races or did run races,
you started creating different races for other people to run in.
Speaker 6 (26:19):
Yeah, I did, and I tried to create races. That's
just a marketing thing, right. I created races around each
of the running stores, like in Tapainka, which we created
races there. In so Park, we created running running races
around each of the stores.
Speaker 7 (26:35):
And then in addition to that, I tried. I tried.
Speaker 6 (26:39):
I tried to I tried a triathlu and Baptist was
the only triathlu that we had in Kansas City, and
I tried. It was really a lot of fun. Coincidentally,
when I was in college. My freshman year, I took
the Red Cross Water Say at the Instructor's course and.
Speaker 7 (26:55):
It really helped me like a teaching swimming lessons.
Speaker 6 (26:58):
And and a friend of my dad, a lawyer in Newville,
he asked me, said, Gary, can you we want to
do some swimming classes at Dublin Gap Dublin Gap State
Park in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 7 (27:11):
And I said, well, let me meet you. So I
met him at the beach and the beach.
Speaker 6 (27:14):
Was probably about all about a quarter of a mile long,
and we had classes. We started classes there and I
did that early in the morning before I started my
regular job. And so I taught swimming lessons.
Speaker 7 (27:26):
But I had like.
Speaker 6 (27:27):
Twenty people that were instructors teaching swimming lessons from me
getting swimming to you know, to.
Speaker 7 (27:33):
To being a water safety person something like that.
Speaker 6 (27:36):
So anyway doing that, and then I thought, why don't
I try something? So I lived I lived there Shawley
Mission Park, and I thought to myself, I would drive
up there and look at the place and think, well,
I could do a traff on here, and there is
a hill that's pretty significant.
Speaker 7 (27:53):
So I went to Johnsay County Park and wreck and they.
Speaker 6 (27:56):
Said, hey, and apparently there were some trap on being
created in other parts of the country, in Michigan, in
Missouri and in Kansas, and they were all for it.
They said, but we're gonna, you know, we're gonna, we're
gonna want to governed it pretty closely.
Speaker 7 (28:11):
And I said, hey, that's fine.
Speaker 6 (28:12):
So I worked with him and I created the Shotted
Mission Traffon. And the first first year that we had it,
there were like three hundred and fifty triathletes that entered.
And here I am the race director, my first trafon
that I ever put on. And I couldn't wait until
you know, you've hit a trathon. You swim first, you
(28:32):
bike second, and you run third. I could not wait
until all the swimmers got out of the water. I
kept think of gosh, almighty, and I kept looking at
the bike rack thinking, and I hope all the bikes
are off the rack and gone. Then I know that
everybody is out of the water.
Speaker 7 (28:46):
Nobody ground right.
Speaker 8 (28:49):
That's funny.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
And of course you competed in a lot of things,
not just triathlons, but marathons, and then you kind of
made it a thing and you've you eventually ran marathons
in every state.
Speaker 6 (29:01):
Yeah, yeah, I did. I started that. That's not I
wouldn't recommend that from marriage. That's kind of hard on
marriage when you if you, if you, if I meet
a marathon in the back of my mind or a
person that's an ultra runner, I think, I wonder, I
think to myself, I wonder how their marriage is going,
because you spend a lot of time away from home
(29:21):
running a marathon like it most most people run on
us on Saturday or a Sunday. They run long what
is long, like three and a half four hours and
training just for have marathon, you've got to run at
least two or three twenty miles, so that takes quite
a long time. So that's it can be difficult on
the marriage.
Speaker 7 (29:40):
But I was lucky.
Speaker 6 (29:41):
I had a group of people and we met on
Metcalf on Saturday mornings John's Space Age Donuts store, and
we would run, you know, not twenty miles every Saturday,
but we would you know, work our way up from
like twelve or fourteen, sixty eighteen to twenty.
Speaker 7 (29:59):
And I had a couple guys that.
Speaker 6 (30:02):
Have since died, not from running, but one was a
lawyer and one was a doctor, and we ran like
thirty marathons together out of town and we would plan
like like we would.
Speaker 7 (30:14):
Plan, you know, where we're going to go.
Speaker 6 (30:16):
And sometimes Danny when we would go to places like
Baltimore and luckily New Jersey had a marathon and Maryland
had a marathon at the same time, so we would
run probably three or four times. We ran like two
marathons on a weekend, one on Saturday and one on Sunday,
(30:36):
you know, so just to try to because we knew that,
we started a goal of trying to run a marathon
in every state.
Speaker 7 (30:41):
So we started knocking off the states.
Speaker 6 (30:43):
And the three of us did that in a matter
of like eight to ten years by doing that. And
actually there's another fellow by the name is Steve Fuller
in Kansas City and he ran he's still running a
marathon right.
Speaker 7 (30:56):
I don't know how he does. He's unbelievable.
Speaker 6 (30:58):
He's runs down like three hundred marathons. But we did,
you know, the fifty one states. But I've done like
one hundred and six. And people say would say that
guy's crazy, that doesn't.
Speaker 7 (31:09):
He have a life?
Speaker 6 (31:10):
Why did he doing that? But being the runner of
a running store, being the owner of a running store.
I would have customers say to me, have you ever
run a marathon? It's kind of a challenge. I said yes,
and they say, yeah, but you haven't run Boston yet,
and I had. I had run it three times. It
was kind of a challenge, but it was kind of
a friendly challenge. So you really aren't a marathon or
(31:33):
until you run Boston. And then doing the triathlons. I
also did the triathlons that I created. I created traflons
at Shana Mission Park, Kansas City, Kansas, at the State
Park over there, and then the Bush Springs the traflon there,
and I just I like doing traflons, and so I
tried to get my PhD and doing traflons by doing
(31:55):
the iron Man's The iron I did The Iron Man,
but luckily I met and knew clothing salesman that sold
clothing Ironman clothing, and so being a retailer, I would
just say to hey, Joe, can you get me into
The Iron Man? He said, yeah, I've got a couple
free slots. I'll get you in, So I excuse me.
I got the end of The Ironman in nineteen eighty six,
(32:17):
and it was really a thrill. It was really it
was really exciting, you know. But the biggest thrill was
the first Metlin I ever did in New York City.
I did that in nineteen seventy eight. They were like
eight thousand people. So, but anyway, participating and being a retailer,
it kind of just came to be credit. But it
was kind of like get my master's degree or doctor
degree and running.
Speaker 8 (32:38):
Well.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
By the nineteen eighties, your stores were in the top
ten running stores for dealers.
Speaker 8 (32:43):
It was successful forever.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
I think anybody who has any thought of running and
running gear. Your name was synonymous with that in Kansas
City and had success for decades and did it and
obviously enjoyed it and did all the other things ancillary
to it. What was the process of deciding at you know,
you were about the age you probably should have maybe
retired already anyway, but you sold your stores in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 8 (33:07):
Tell us about the process of that.
Speaker 6 (33:10):
Well, you know, I business was fine, the bills roll
getting paid, and business was good. But I was at
the time seventy four seventy five, and I felt like, hey,
you know, and my wife helped me.
Speaker 7 (33:23):
She helped me make the decision.
Speaker 6 (33:24):
She's wiser in many ways than I am about some things.
And I thought, you know, and I and luckily corporate
there were corporations that were buying running stories and I
had I got an offer from one, and then I
got an offer from another, and I decided to tell
Dan because it was this, you know, I'd been doing
it for thirty years and at you know, most people
(33:45):
retired when they're in their sixties.
Speaker 7 (33:47):
Right, And I love the hours I was.
Speaker 6 (33:49):
I mean, they were complained about the hours, and my
wife would still works she's seventy three. But I just thought, yeah,
I'm going to sell, and I sold, and it's been
it's been a fun thing.
Speaker 7 (33:59):
You know.
Speaker 6 (33:59):
It's been almost eleven years since I sold the stores,
and I saw have many fond memories, you know, and
I've made a lot of friends. I still when I'm
out walking the things, I'll see people and they'll they'll
know who I am. But I'm a kind I'm kind
of a low key guy, though I don't like you know, publishment.
I actually had I had a when I opened my stores.
I was just gonna call I actually was going to
(34:19):
do a franchise.
Speaker 7 (34:21):
From from a from a.
Speaker 6 (34:22):
Place out of Atlanta, and I had a running friend
who was a marketing guy for a TV thing, and
he said, no, you've.
Speaker 7 (34:28):
Got to put your name first. And I said, I
can't do that. People people will think you're bragging, and
I don't want to do that.
Speaker 6 (34:34):
And then he said, Gary, you got to do that.
You got to put your name first. And I was
pretty apprehensive about doing that. But I'm really glad I
did it because I just talked to someone that works
in one of the stores and my former stores, and
they say, we still call it Gary Ribbles, and the
customers con.
Speaker 7 (34:50):
Men, well, they call and call it Gary Ribbles. So anyway,
we can see. It was a great place for me
to land. And uh, it's been. It's been my life
more enjoyable.
Speaker 8 (35:00):
Dabby, How is retirement treated you?
Speaker 7 (35:04):
It's great, it's great.
Speaker 6 (35:05):
I have a you know, I have two kids and
another are here. My wife and I adopted in addition
to the two existed and children I had, we adopted.
Speaker 7 (35:15):
A a little.
Speaker 6 (35:16):
Girl from China and now she's thirty one and she's
working has a good company, working for a car working
for merchades overseas Stuttgart.
Speaker 7 (35:26):
And I read a lot.
Speaker 6 (35:27):
My wife reads a lot, you know, I kind of
get out and walk and all that kind of stuff,
and life is good, very good, Danny, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (35:34):
Well.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
I had the pleasure of meeting with your running group
of veteran runners, and they're a testimony to running because
they are all pretty elderly with a couple of exceptions,
and they all look great, and they all look healthy.
And you guys have fun once a month gathering and
telling some stories.
Speaker 7 (35:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (35:54):
Yeah, and it is fun, and they're all great guys.
They're all givers there and we're still learning. I mean,
so there's one one or two of the guys that
are you know that's still run. A fellow that I mentioned,
t Fuller, he's like seventy seven or seventy eight.
Speaker 7 (36:08):
I think you probably knew. Was like, hey, he's fretter
than me. Yeah, he's still there. He's still reading there.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Yeah, we did we did one and we did one
of these with him about a month ago. So it
was a fun story to tell you.
Speaker 7 (36:18):
He's a great guy.
Speaker 6 (36:19):
He really very friendly, and he's the kind of guy
that that we'd be running and say, hey, Steve, I'm
looking at the lease in the in topeaker, I'm looking
some for Lawrence.
Speaker 7 (36:28):
What what do you think? What do you what do
you think about this?
Speaker 9 (36:30):
Or that?
Speaker 7 (36:30):
That part because I being a runner and already as
a running for a retailer, you kind of got to
get you know.
Speaker 6 (36:36):
I think I was as much a finding good location
as there wasn't anything. But you know this, I learned that,
and you learn about real estate. Of course I had somewhat.
I did some of that some of that when I
worked for Hallmark in the past. But the runners can
be really very helpful to you if you want to
ask questions about business questions or or training questions or whatever,
(36:56):
you know. Like like in nineteen eighty five or eighty six,
there was one of my employees.
Speaker 7 (37:02):
He was a frustrated school teacher.
Speaker 6 (37:03):
And his name is Eladio Valdez, right, And he was
a teacher, and he said, here, I want to I
want to work in your store. I said, look, you're
making X amount of money. That's about what you're going
to make when you're working in the store. He said, yeah,
I know, but I'm frustrated. I don't want to teach.
And I said, well, Lanio, you're you're a coach. You're
a runner, let's start a running program. So we created
(37:24):
He and I we created a running program called Running
Runner's Edge, and he's had the Runners Edge out since
the mid eighties and we've had like up to twenty
or two hundred people in the group that would meet
on Saturdays. And the running group goes all over Kansas
City on a Saturday, will meet in different places, so
(37:45):
you learn the geography of different places. And when they
would come to my stores like Stole Park or Ward Parkway,
the store at Ward Parkway may do on a businy Saturday,
twelve to fifteen thousand dollars at retail.
Speaker 7 (38:00):
When the running group would run from Ward Parkway.
Speaker 6 (38:02):
Before my store opened before ten am, we would do
that ten thousand dollars from the running group, right, But
I did. I did pass on a twenty percent discount
when they were in the store, just when they were stored,
which was it was a good thing.
Speaker 7 (38:15):
So that was that was one of the best things
I think we ever did, too, was the after Brunner's
Hedge program.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
And looking back, there are many things you did. You
must be able to reflect proudly on all the things
that you've done so far.
Speaker 7 (38:27):
Yeah, it's been a thrill.
Speaker 6 (38:30):
It has been. And with the background I had, you know,
in working with some of the jobs at the Hallmark
as a salesman, as a training manager, as a regional
training manager, then as a personnel manager of just learning to.
Speaker 7 (38:42):
Listen more and talk less and all that kind of stuff.
It's been.
Speaker 6 (38:45):
It's been helpful to me and my partner. My wife,
she's been extremely helpful. She doesn't work in the store.
She never came to the store, but she would. I
was like being married to a personnel manager. And I'm
not trying to put down personnel.
Speaker 7 (38:57):
Manager, but she did a great job of helping me.
So I had heard beheld with me.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
We hope you enjoyed the latest Danny Klinkscale Reasonably Irreverent podcast.
Come back soon for something fresh and new. This podcast
was made possible by our great sponsors like Eastern Roofing,
where integrity matters. Joe Spiker and his team are the
best in the business for all your roofing needs. Handle
(39:25):
with honesty and craftsmanship. Visit them at Easternroofing dot com.
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