The Untold Truth Of Lisa Kelly From Ice Road Truckers

"I was told right upfront on the first season, 'They picked you for eye candy,'" Lisa Kelly recalled to Trucking Info about her casting on one of the History Channel's most popular and longest-running shows, "Ice Road Truckers." "I was like, 'I'm going to prove that I'm more than that.'" The Grand Rapids native has certainly done so, going on to show off her driving skills, steely determination, and strong sense of female empowerment across multiple seasons and spinoffs of the snow-covered series since her debut in 2009. 

So how exactly did Kelly make the journey from a small-town Alaskan farm to reality TV fame? What does she enjoy doing when not hauling cargo across precarious frozen territories in the name of entertainment? And what title did Esquire magazine bestow upon her just a year after she first caught worldwide attention? Here's a look at the pioneering trucker's untold truth.

You might have thought that Lisa Kelly became a trucker, a world inhabited almost exclusively by men, because it was in her blood. But not a single member of her family is, or was ever, in the profession.

Kelly, who was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan before moving at the age of 6 to the small Alaskan town of Sterling, was raised by two parents in the medical industry: one a dental hygienist and the other a nurse. And it was the tales they told of their day-to-day lives that deterred her from ever following in their footsteps. One of Kelly's first gigs was indeed behind the wheel, but a vehicle used to transport delicious cheesy doughy goodness rather than multi-ton cargo. 

"Delivering pizza, I could drive around town – nobody said you had to take the road – and I feel like I'm a part of society ... That's when I'm like, 'I want to drive a truck,'" Kelly told Overdrive about her career epiphany. So what do her nearest and dearest make of the unorthodox job she has now? Well, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, she revealed, "My husband is very supportive. The rest of them I don't bother to ask."

Lisa Kelly headed back home to her birthplace of Grand Rapids after graduating from high school to attend Cornerstone University. But she soon discovered that college life wasn't for her. In fact, the future History Channel star dropped out after just a single semester. "They were pushing us to pick our major, and I didn't want to choose," she told Overdrive about why she was reluctant to attend college in the first place. 

On her eponymous blog, Kelly explained that she decided to leave following an eventful Christmas break in which she somehow crashed a truck belonging to her closest pal. "... I 'knew' what I wanted to do and wanted to go to a specialty school that mainly taught the kinds of things that I wanted to learn," she said.

This specialty was linked with her future role as a History Channel favorite. Kelly had wanted to attend a Californian arts school to specialize in TV editing. "... As we all know about life's twists and turns, instead of going to the new school, I met a guy and didn't want to leave," she explained about why she never made it there. 

Lisa Kelly's motoring talents extend far beyond driving monster-sized vehicles in hazardous conditions. Before entering the predominantly male world of ice road trucking, the History Channel favorite proved that she was just as skilled with two wheels as four as a state motocross champion.

Kelly, who also spends her downtime snowboarding, hang gliding, and skydiving, and is a keen horse rider, explained on her blog why she's something of a daredevil: "I have a genuine love for life and want to live it to the fullest with the precious time that I've been given here on Earth. I want to be old and have no regrets of the things I haven't done."

The "Ice Road Truckers" star, who also enjoys the slightly more sedate pastime of playing the piano, went on to add, "Living life to the fullest to me means dreaming big and then going for it, it means being a person that I would want to hang out with, and it means keeping an optimistic view and keeping hope because there really is no point in living life miserable." As expected, Kelly has encountered terrifying moments on "Ice Truckers," but she's not alone in this vein. Here are some Hollywood daredevils who suffered close calls.  

Lisa Kelly has been supported through her unlikely rise to reality TV fame by her husband Traves Kelly, whom she walked down the aisle with in 2008. Unsurprisingly, her passion for the open road sparked their meet-cute.

Lisa first clapped eyes on Traves four years earlier at a motorbike shop. He was working there while she was in the process of buying her beloved Kawasaki 125. After connecting at a racetrack where she was competing as a motocross rider, the latter invited the former to Anchorage, where he was participating in a freestyle dirt bike show. "Our first date ended with Traves separating his shoulder," she recalled on her blog.

In an interview with Truck News, Lisa was asked how her other half, who now makes a living as a plumber, feels about her being away with work so often. "I have a very understanding husband," she replied. "He gives me the freedom to go away for so many months, and it is amazing."

Lisa Kelly's journey to ice road trucking fame began properly when she landed a job driving around 40 children every day in a school bus. "I couldn't wait 'til my freight didn't scream anymore," she explained to Overdrive. The headache-inducing nature of the role spurred her on to seek employment elsewhere, and she eventually landed a position with Carlile Transportation as an oil field courier driver.

"I'd jump into big trucks in my downtime around the yard and back in trailers, and the guys there taught me how to drive," Kelly added about how she gained the necessary skills. She subsequently earned her CDL (commercial driver's license) and worked her way up to line driver and then the position she's now known across the world for.

"A lot of companies wouldn't hire me, but Carlile were like, 'Yeah, we'll give you a chance,'" she told Esquire about the difficulties she faced attempting to enter what's widely regarded as a man-only profession. "They didn't look at what was on the outside." But her co-workers didn't always feel the same. "As a girl, they're all kind of waiting for you to fail, I guess," Kelly said at Trucking HR Canada's annual Women with Drive conference (via Heavy Duty Trucking). "I was just being watched closer." Here's a look at some celebs who don't know how to drive. 

Carlile Transportation was also instrumental in helping to launch Lisa Kelly's TV career. Indeed, it was the head of the company who recommended her to the makers of "Ice Road Truckers." "He thought I'd be an interesting character," she told Diesel Spec Inc. And his endorsement paid off when she became the show's first female driver in Season 3.

Kelly became a virtual ever-present on the show, appearing in all but one of its following nine seasons. She was also invited to join the likes of Dave Redmon, Rick Yemm, and Alex Debogorski in the spinoff "Deadliest Roads" and lend her voice to the PC game "Alaskan Road Truckers."

But if you thought that being a regular face on the History Channel brought in the big bucks, think again. "I didn't even get paid for the first two or three years that I was on the show," Kelly revealed during a chat with Heavy Duty Trucking. "I was just got paid extra from my company for taking the time and doing it." And she initially struggled to deal with the difference between her real life and on-screen persona: "It's really hard to feature a three-dimensional person on a two-dimensional screen. I think I was more experienced than I came off on camera. And just 'cause I had blonde hair, they were kind of, 'Let's play the dumb blonde character.'"

Lisa Kelly soon discovered that not everything that appears on reality TV is as it seems. Indeed, to ensure that each episode had at least a few perilous moments, producers of "Ice Road Truckers" would often engineer certain scenes to keep viewers glued to their TV.

"There was times when things would happen for real, and then other times there was the potential that it was going to happen, so we kind of helped it along a little bit to make it a story," Kelly told Trucking Info. "It wasn't a script, and we could say what we wanted – but you had to say certain things in order for the story to make sense."

Kelly admitted that she volunteered for one particular stunt that had been organized beforehand, a drive across a frozen lake that suddenly starts to crack. The former pizza delivery driver actually missed the gap that the production team had spent hours preparing the first time around but eventually nailed the required shot. Even though she was expecting it, the "accident" still came as a surprise. "That reaction was genuine," she said, referring to her look of shock. Here's a look at the reasons why another History Channel show, "American Pickers," is totally fake.

Lisa Kelly no doubt had a pinch-me moment when she was invited to appear on the oft-controversial David Letterman's late-night show in 2010 to discuss "Ice Road Truckers" spinoff "Deadliest Roads." And she revealed what was then her all-time scariest driving route: India's Himalayan mountains.

"I think they were just looking for bad roads around the world, and they picked the worst first," Kelly explained (via Looper) about the drive, which she claimed was even more terrifying than it looked on television. When asked by the host why she puts herself through such precarious situations, the History Channel star simply replied, "For entertainment, I guess."

But things only got more precarious. Several years later, she told Heavy Duty Trucking that her subsequent visits to Bolivia and Peru made India look like a walk in the park because its roads were made of dirt rather than much firmer rock. "You got some truck that's falling apart, that's overloaded on some cliff edge, and I kept trying to get it going, and it kept stalling out and rolling back," she recalled one particularly perilous drive. "And every time it rolled back it came that much closer to the edge." 

Lisa Kelly has been an avid fan of horses since she moved to a small Alaskan farm at the age of 6. And she's continued to pursue her passion for all things equine between her stints on "Ice Road Truckers." During a 2018 interview with Diesel Spec Inc., the History Channel star revealed that she currently owned six horses, all of whom she'd rescued.

Lisa explained that she'd procured them from owners who didn't have the necessary skills or funds to treat their medical conditions: "One horse kept going lame. We had her knee X-rayed, and it has a bone chip. It's not really worth surgery to take it out, but it causes her to favor that leg and put more weight on the other leg, so it's the other leg she's lame in. We give her Adequan shots once a month, and it helps her joints."

After acquiring more land for the farm she shares with husband Traves Kelly, Lisa also decided to track down the horse she was forced to sell when it was just 6 months old, with their reunion being filmed for "Ice Road Truckers." "She'll never go anywhere again," she added.

Lisa Kelly proved to be such a popular presence on "Ice Road Truckers" that she was soon offered several endorsement deals. As someone who spends her days navigating precarious journeys in a Kenworth W900, it wasn't the likes of L'Oréal that came calling.

In 2016, Kelly was announced as the new face of Delo, the company specializing in heavy-duty Chevron motor oil. "... As soon as we heard Lisa Kelly was a long time Delo user, we couldn't wait to bring her onto the team," brand manager Rommel Atienza said (via CCJ) in a press statement. And the reality TV star played saleswoman to perfection.

"I have relied on Delo since I began my career in trucking," Kelly said in relation to a new campaign called Reality of Delo. "I drive some of the deadliest roads in the world. I can't take chances on oils. I need to know I've got the most durable, reliable and toughest lubricants in my truck. An oil that I can count on to protect my truck even in the harshest conditions. Up on the ice roads, Delo is just what we use." While Kelly's endorsement was safe, other celebs cannot say the same. Here's a look at the most controversial celebrity product deals. 

In 2010, just a year after she'd made the unexpected move into reality television, Lisa Kelly was interviewed by Esquire while she was on location in the Himalayas. And this being a men's magazine and all, the piece was headlined, "The Sexiest Trucker Alive." Three years later, even the Los Angeles Times was at it, telling her she's "very attractive" while asking her what it feels like to be a sex symbol.

"It's affected me in certain ways," Kelly replied. "People judge a book by its cover. But the people who hired me looked beyond that. If you can do that job, that's what's important." While speaking to Diesel Spec Inc., the History Channel star was keen to point out that she has just as many female fans as male.

"Last year I went to Love's Travel Stops as part of a tour, and a lot of women came up to me who were either inspired to become truck drivers or were already drivers and said, 'Thank you for making women look good in the industry,'" Kelly recalled. "That's pretty cool." Here's a look at other celebrities who've rejected their sex symbol image.