Delon Parker, a native of Big Sky country, is headed this winter to his 20th Montana Circuit Finals Rodeo heading steers, just a handful of months after major back and shoulder surgeries. But he’s not just tough. Nor is he just a rodeo hand.
For years, Parker has symbolized the American cowboy in Resistol and Boot Barn print and TV ads and on packs of Marlboro reds. That’s right, he’s not only one of the iconic “Marlboro Men” – he has also headed steers at the Canadian Finals Rodeo.
“My dad, Doyle Parker, rode bulls, but I spent a lot of time growing up with my uncle Bill,” Delon recounted this August from a Resistol shoot in the Montana mountains. “Bill heeled for David Motes at the 1978 NFR, then made the tie-down roping there in 1980 as the only Montanan until Haven [Meged]. And he team roped at the Finals again in ’82 with Brad Smith.”
Just like Darrell Winfield, the ranch-hand-turned-Marlboro-Man of the 1970s and ‘80s, Delon Parker is an old-school throwback. The 41-year-old lives and works every day on the sprawling Glennie cattle ranch. It’s nestled under the stunning Crazy Mountains near the town of Two Dot: population 26.
In his spare time, he trains six to eight rope horses a year. He trained his Montana Circuit Head Horse of the Year from “a broncy 3-year-old.” He also trained his partner Ryan Zurcher’s Montana Circuit Heel Horse of the Year, as well as the bay heel horse that Joseph Harrison rode at the 2020 NFR.
Parker made his Circuit Finals heeling one year, too, just to prove to himself he could, and has qualified in the tie-down roping and steer roping five and six times, respectively.
Around 2014, Zurcher kept telling him about a Facebook post asking for cowboy models. Parker finally sent his information to the agency, but turned down their request to drive to Pendleton, Ore., for a test shoot. Then a stranger called and told him he’d better find a way to get to Pendleton because it would change his life. Turns out, it was the man running the Marlboro campaign for Philip Morris.
The list of hundreds of cowboy hopefuls was whittled down to Parker and Hall-of-Fame bull rider Ross Coleman. Philip Morris decided to keep them both. After a few years, photographers like Men’s Journal contributor Chris Douglasmet them and began depicting them not just in Western brands, but also to promote elite sunglasses, leisure wear and even a non-alcoholic beer, which cracks Parker up.
“I’ve been some crazy places,” he said. “We’ve landed a plane on a glacier in Alaska.”
Most of the time, he’s horseback and chasing or roping something, or picking up Montana Hall-of-Fame bronc rider Josh Reynolds from a bucker on the side of some mountain. Parker never knows if he’ll be asked to, say, move heifers around a meadow or just “yee-haw” in an arena. But playing cowboy isn’t any safer than actually working as one.
“On a Boot Barn shoot about five years ago, we crashed a Polaris RZR going about 90 and I was in the passenger seat,” Parker said. “I got drug down this mountain hanging out a window and tore my right shoulder all up. They wanted to replace the joint, but I wouldn’t let them, because then I couldn’t rope.”
Finally at last year’s Montana Circuit Finals Rodeo, he no longer had a choice. In Great Falls, Parker’s shoulder dislocated itself when he reached at his second steer with Zurcher. The pair were still winning the rodeo by a mile. All Parker needed to win the team roping and all-around at his Circuit Finals was to stop the clock in the short round.
“We were high call and I couldn’t even touch my nose,” he said. “I spent all night trying to pop my shoulder back in, tried sports medicine and they couldn’t help, called the hospital to see if they’d inject it.”
But all the toughness in the world can’t help when you can’t lift your arm.
Then that spring on the ranch, as Parker loaded a snubbed yearling into a trailer to move to summer pasture, his ranch horse jumped in and smashed him into the trailer’s six-foot ceiling, breaking three or four vertebrae in his back.
Sidelined with two 12-inch rods and 10 screws in his back, he went ahead and fixed the shoulder. But even once all the hardware was removed in March, he still could hardly ride at the end of May, said Parker, whose wife Hannah is one of the first and only “Marlboro women.” Their daughter is 18 months old and Delon has an 18-year-old daughter from his first marriage who’s playing volleyball at a Montana college.
Today, with half his back fused together, Parker is ranked a comfortable third in the Montana Circuit heading standings, despite the five-month layoff.
“I now have a whole new perspective on getting to do all the stuff I love,” he said. “I feel like I’m an 18-year-old kid again. And I’m super fortunate that Philip Morris let me do a couple of shoots when I couldn’t even get on a horse. They took pretty good care of me.”