Starting in 1989 as a reporter for the Hope Star daily newspaper in Hope, Arkansas, he went on to work for more than a dozen papers in Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma. A graduate of Henderson State University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, he and his wife, Christa, live in Magnolia, Arkansas, where he works in Marketing at Southern Arkansas University. Christa has three children and he has a grown daughter, Jodi, as well as two grandchildren.