When Coy Thorson was a boy, there were times he cried and told his older brother, Colton, that he didn’t want to ride, and he still remembers how those moments ended.
“There were a couple times, when I was a kid, I was crying, telling him, ‘I don’t want to do it.’ But he’d say, you’re getting on. And I’d get on and ride. It was get tough or die for us as children, growing up.”
He told that story to Tri-State Livestock News, which ran a feature on October 16, 2026, about how his Minnesota family makes its living with horses and rodeo. His mother, Kelly, remembered how early the paydays started.
“They weren’t very old, and they were making $25 a ride,” she said.
Those kids have since built horse and livestock businesses of their own. Colton Thorson, his partner Alise Holst and their daughter Denim own and operate Triple T Livestock at Nevis. Paris Thorson and her sons, Bronc and Woodrow, run P3 Livestock at Akeley. Coy, the youngest, has Coy Thorson Equine and Bovine with his partner, Shelby Roehl, and their son, Knox.
Coy has a short way of putting it. “There was no backing out,” he said.
Coy Thorson Rode a Bull That Went Unridden in 2022 and 2023
Coy is a bull rider in the PRCA, the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, and he goes by “The Up North Outlaw.” In February 2025, the cowboy from Fergus Falls won the Saturday bull riding at the Big Bucks ProRodeo in Bismarck on a bull with a reputation.
Big Buck’s Little Wolf went unridden in 2022 and 2023 and bucked off 87% of the riders who tried him in 2024, Kirchmann Media Group reported. Coy rode him for 85.5 points and won $1,914.
“I didn’t look him up or anything, I just went there and did my job and it worked out,” he said.
Contestants there competed for $42,461 in the Badlands Circuit through icy conditions and four inches of snow.
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Coy told Tri-State he rodeos as much as he can, and when he is not healthy, he goes home and rides. The boy who cried before getting on grew into the man who rode Little Wolf.
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The Thorson Siblings Turned Their Rodeo Childhoods Into Horse Businesses
Kelly juggled work and rodeo during those childhoods. She worked as a registered nurse, and when she wasn’t working, she coached the kids and hauled them to rodeos and shows across the country. She told the paper she is more their cheerleader now.
Colton and Alise formed Triple T four years ago, and both came in knowing the business. Colton produced an annual horse sale before they met, and Alise trained and sold horses herself, selling at the Cowgirl Cadillac Sale since it started eight years ago. Triple T spends summers in Minnesota and winters in Arizona and takes its finished horses to eight to ten sales a year.
Alise likes them broke, versatile and user-friendly, and she wants them to have seen almost everything.
Paris said she had a horse sell for $100,000 at the Cowgirl Cadillac sale the year before the feature ran, and she called it “definitely a huge deal.” Her son Bronc sold a pony he trained at the SoCal Premier Horse Sale in Santa Barbara, California, that same year and was first reserve high seller pony.
Oldest sister Paige Carlson and her husband, Cassidy, own the ranch where Coy trains horses, and they care for those horses while he is on the rodeo road.
Kelly’s kids once made $25 a ride. Now they run three horse and livestock businesses, Coy rides bulls in the PRCA, and Paris’s son Bronc has already sold a pony he trained himself.
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