Evel Knievel Biography

Motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel defied death for decades. But on Friday (Nov. 30, 2007), he died in Clearwater, Florida.  

He had been in failing health for years, suffering from diabetes and an incurable condition that scarred his lungs.

Robert Craig "Evel" Knievel, Jr. was born October 17, 1938 , in Butte, Montana.  Raised by his grandparents in Butte , a copper-mining town, he began doing motorcycle stunts as a teenager.

He embarked on an incredibly varied career (1956–65) that included professional hockey, a stint in the U.S. Army, work in the copper mines, and eventually crime - safecracking and holdups.

He ‘went straight’ in 1965 and formed a troupe called Evel Knievel's Motorcycle Devils. He rode through fire walls and jumped over live rattlesnakes.

He steadily increased the length and danger of the jumps until, on New Year's Eve 1967 he was nearly killed when he jumped the fountains in front of Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. The crash landing put him in the hospital in a coma for 29 days.

Knievel’s many dangerous and thrilling stunts, including jumps over Greyhound buses, live sharks and Idaho's Snake River Canyon, made him an international icon in the 1970s. Immortalized in the Washington's Smithsonian Institution as "America's Legendary Daredevil," Knievel suffered nearly 40 broken bones before he retired in 1980. 

Knievel married hometown girlfriend, Linda Joan Bork, in 1959. They separated in the early 1990s. They had four children, Kelly, Robbie, Tracey and Alicia. After Evel retired, he managed Robbie's stunt career.