Chris Kyle was born on April 8th 1974 to the son of a church deacon and a Sunday school teacher in Odessa Texas. They lived on a cattle ranch in a rural part of Texas. Because his father worked at Southwestern Bell, the family had to move all over Texas.
He states in his book that around the same time he was learning
how to read and write, he also learned to
appreciate and love guns. He was a natural hunter like his father and brother
and loved to have BB gun (air rifle) wars with his friends. When he
was 8 years old his dad bought him a Springfield rifle then a
shotgun which he used to hunt quail, deer and pheasant.
Chris Kyle was also a very good sportsman and back in his high school
days in Midlothian, he played baseball and football. He
also liked to fight and stick up for others which is something he
learned from his dad who told him to never start a fight. Chris did
abide by this rule sometimes but found himself finishing a lot of
them.
Being a Texan, he was a bit of a cowboy so he loved horses and
rodeos. He practised a lot after school and ended up a professional
bronco rodeo rider. Unfortunately this did not last too long after a
bad injury left pins in his arm. He also went to Tarleton State for two years
to have fun: he partied and got into fights instead of studying so
he decided to go back to the Texan lifestyle of ranches and horses.
It was around this time that he happened to stumble upon some military recruiters at a shopping mall. He wanted to chat to the Army recruiter, but he was on a break and ended up chatting to the Navy recruiter.
Chris did not want the normal military job, he wanted to do something cool like Special Forces and this was when he found out about the SEALS. He signed up, but was rejected because of the pins in his arm. But as fate had it, they called him back sometime later and offered him a chance to try out for BUDS which is the basic schooling/course before SEALS. He completed this and went on to become a SEAL eventually deployed to SEAL Team 3.
Not long after Chris joined Navy SEAL Team 3 in April 2001, he met the love of his life Taya at the Maloneys bar in San Diego. Ironically they were playing 'Down Under' by Men at Work a great Aussie band. Maybe the Aussie influence made her go into that bar with her friend or maybe it was the fact that her friend paid for them to go in there. (Yeah this webmaster is an Aussie).
At the time, Taya was a pharmaceutical drug rep who moved to San Diego from her home town of Oregon. She was chatting to one of Kyles friends when she noticed Chris. They started chatting and she asked him what he did for work, so he told her he was an ice cream truck driver.
She was not fooled by this and figured out herself that he must have been in the military. They even had a little argument during their first encounter which made both of them even more interested in one another.
Because his mates were at the bar with him, they gave him a bit of shit about the fact she would never ring him back. Then one day, she did! Chris and Taya eventually got married and have 2 children together. A boy and girl. Through the good times and the bad times, they stayed together up until his passing in February 2013.
