Bill Dance, one of the world’s most famous fishermen, always planned to be a doctor like his father, grandfather and three other generations of Dances.
Then, driving home one night while enrolled in medical school in Memphis, Tenn., in the early 1960s, he came upon a horrific motorcycle crash. The grisly encounter changed his life.
“I was the first person on the scene,” Dance recalls. “It was very traumatic and it affected me deeply. At that moment I knew I didn’t want to be a doctor anymore.”
What did he want to be? “Well,” says Dance in his down-home Southern drawl, “I’d always loved to fish.” Bill Dance Outdoors premiered on a Memphis ABC affiliate in 1968 and has been growing in popularity ever since. Today the show is televised nationwide on NBC Sports with 37 new shows each year and its host has achieved celebrity status among the nation’s 45 million anglers.
Dance developed his love affair with fishing as a kid, wading Mulberry Creek in Lynchburg, Tenn. with his grandfather.
Dance attributes his success to the support of his wife, Dianne, whom he met on a blind date when his original date canceled. They’ve been married 47 years and have four grown children, including Bill Jr. and Patrick, who help run their dad’s outdoors productions from Dance’s home and a 5,000-square-foot office next door. Dance teasingly describes Dianne as “the best catch I ever made.” The wife of the world’s most famous fisherman doesn’t fish.