Joyce & Bob Riley — celebrating 40 years for City Feed

Joyce & Bob Riley — celebrating 40 years for City Feed

ATimes Staff Feature Joyce and Bob Riley have owned City Feed on East Broadway since October of 1976. Joyce and Bob have a daughter, Vickie, a grandson, Justin, his wife Angel and their new granddaughter, Dallas Marie, who can be found at the store many days.

“We are expecting another granddaughter,” said the proud great grandmother.

Joyce is 78 years young and doesn’t mind telling anyone. Bob is nearly 83, and isn’t quite as happy to tell. Bob and Joyce have been married 57 years.

Joyce is a hard working woman. She runs around 90 cattle on the levee and bales hay on around 2 and 1/2 miles of levee for them each year. Joyce has helped birth the calves, doctor the cows, and checks on them every day.

Joyce and Bob have been in West Memphis since 1961. Before the feed store, Joyce ran a stable on south 8th Street for 10 years that originally belonged to Otis Rushing. Before that, she ran a stable for 10 years behind the American Legion next to Bill Slaughter’s stable. The stable on 8th Street once had Thursday night shows and many young cowboys and cowgirls got their start there.

She fed a lot of horses and rented stalls. Bob was a truck driver before becoming full time at the feed store and showed gaited horses for 10 years. The couple showed in NEA horse show association and NECA association. Joyce showed one time in the Fox Trot class and decided showing wasn’t for her.

Vickie showed her pony and also showed other horses. Justin likes horses but never found horse shows to be of interest to him, except when his mother or grandmother put him in lead line classes before he was able to object.

The feed store has a variety of feeds, bedding, pet supplies and tack. City Feed was also one of those establishments that once offered charge accounts but that went the way of the debit card, which she now accepts.

Joyce was always willing to order products that she didn’t keep in stock and would let the young’ens pay their purchases out.

She was always willing to help. She has a world of knowledge about horse ailments and gives experienced advice. If your animal has a problem Joyce can usually tell you what to do for them. When the new ‘supply’ store came to West Memphis it may have hurt business some but Joyce says her patrons are pretty much the same as always.

Loyal customers seem to like the homey fashion of City Feed more than a chain store.

Joyce, Bob and I reminisced about many of the horse show people we’ve known over the years and experiences we’ve had.

Joyce remembers so much that we could have talked for ever. “What people don’t do now is have fun.

Back then we all went to the shows, visited with our friends and had fun riding.

No one these days has any fun,” she said. “We would sit at the saddle club each night and watch people ride and just enjoy the experience. We had fun.”

When asked, “Are you ever going to let Bob retire?” Joyce had a quick response.

“He would just waste away if he didn’t come up here everyday,” she said.

She was then asked, “What about you?”

“I’ll probably have this store open as long as I can,” she said. “We have new restrictions from the government that will really change things in January 2017 and change some of the items I sell, but I’ll be here till they run all the small businesses out.”

By Joy Hall