When Tiffany Davis took her seat at a Fort Worth Professional Bull Riders show 12 years ago, it seemed like it would be another typical night of watching her fiance, Jerome, compete on a big stage.

They were engaged to be married in a couple of months. He was wearing a gold World Championship buckle, and was one of the top cowboys on the rapidly emerging PBR tour.

But then tragedy struck. Jerome suffered a broken neck when a bull threw him headfirst into the arena floor. He was paralyzed from the chest down.

Since that horrific March night, Tiffany has chosen to become closer and closer to the man she’s always loved.

“When I first met Jerome, he was a young kid who rode horses at the horse sale for five dollars a head, so he could pay his entry fees and enter bull ridings,” Tiffany Davis said. “I’ve seen him move from that level to becoming a World Champion, and it never changed his attitude one bit. He was still the humble happy guy.

“When he had his accident, I become worried. But thank the good Lord, he’s able to continue to be that same person he was back when we were 16.”

She’s also never changed. Since Jerome Davis became wheelchair-bound, Tiffany has faithfully stood by him. In fact, after he was injured in March of 1998, they moved their wedding date from May to October of that year and since have been a very close couple.

Tiffany Davis was honored for her commitment to her husband and bull riding this weekend. She was the first recipient of the PBR’s Sharon Shoulders Award, named after the wife of seven-time bull riding World Champion Jim Shoulders, a 1950s star.

Davis received the award on Saturday in Pueblo, Colo. The award was given in conjunction with the PBR’s annual Ring of Honor ceremony and in combination with the association’s Built Ford Tough Series this weekend in Pueblo.

Jerome Davis said his wife was very deserving.

“She’s a blessing, that’s for sure,” he said. “She’s always been very positive on my injury and my outlook. It’s been 12 years now, and we’re still sticking right in there together. It would be tough to go through this by myself, and it’s great to have her around.”

However, Jerome admitted that he tried to discourage Tiffany from staying with him right after he sustained the injury, thinking that it would be unfair to her.

“I tried to run her off because I didn’t want her to have to go through all of that because she was too good of a girl,” he said. “But she would have no part of that. As it worked out, she didn’t want to go anywhere. Since then, she’s taken everything in stride, and it takes a special person to be able to do that.”

Over the past 12 years, Tiffany Davis has worked closely in the bull riding business with her husband at their home in Archdale, N.C. The couple lives in house that’s been in Jerome’s family for the past 110 years. Their days are filled with raising bucking bulls, conducting bull riding schools, helping produce PBR Touring Pro and Ford Series shows, producing junior rodeos and holding weekly Cowboy Church services.

Every day, they work together to stay up with their busy schedule.

“Jerome is a very independent person,” Tiffany said. “He was always the type of person who would never ask anybody for anything. But now, he has to step back and receive help. However, I don’t think people realize how hands-on he is. At the same time, when he gets up to feed in the mornings, he can’t do it all by himself. For example, he’ll drive me around, and I’ll feed. We work as a team.”

Tiffany has helped Jerome in the livestock business since the early days of their romance. She’s the daughter of stock contractor Roger Brady, and she began raising bucking bulls as a teenager.

In fact, she would take her tip money she made as a waitress and invest it in bucking bulls during her teen years.

“In those years, all of my friends had a car payment, but I had a cow payment,” Tiffany said with a chuckle.

Early on in their relationship, Jerome also had a passion for raising bulls. With that in mind, Tiffany gave Jerome a small herd of cattle as a Christmas present when he was courting her in the mid 1990s.

“My advice to ladies who want to win her cowboy over: Give him some cows and that will win his heart,” Tiffany said.

Over the years, she’s won his heart by sticking around through his triumphs and tragedies. In 1995, Davis won the world bull riding title in the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association. He became the first cowboy from East of the Mississippi to win a gold buckle.

Jerome also was a founding father of the PBR. Three years after winning the world title, he sustained his crippling injury and since hasn’t walked.

“Of course, there’s been lots of hard trials,” Tiffany said. “But everybody has trials. Granted that his situation is worse than most, the way we look at it, there’s always somebody who has it worse than we do. We’re just thankful for what we have, and we’re appreciative to be able to do the stuff we love such as raise bucking bulls and to be a part of the PBR family.”

Cody Lambert, the PBR’s longtime livestock director, said Tiffany Davis deserved to be honored.

“Everybody who knows Tiffany just loves and respects her, but the more you get to know her, the more respect you have for everything she does,” Lambert said. “She was very young when Jerome got hurt and there never was a moment that she wasn’t sticking by him. When you’re around both of them, they just make you want to be a better person.”

Throughout the past two decades, Tiffany Davis has made a big impression on Lambert’s wife, Leanne, who said she has been a tremendous example of exercising Christian faith to work through difficult challenges.

“Tiffany is so special, and when I grow up, I want to be just like her,” Leanne Lambert said jokingly. “I’ve known Tiffany since she was 19 and I’ve never seen her in a bad mood. I’ve met up with her at the rodeo after driving all night and she was still perky. But I wasn’t. She’s just a wonderful person.”

Sharon Shoulders, a resident of Henrietta, Okla., who was in Pueblo this weekend to present the new award, said Tiffany Davis was well-deserving.

“It was a no-brainer,” Shoulders said. “When it was decided that this type of an award was going to be given, everyone thought about Tiffany. She and Jerome were engaged before he had his accident and I know there were people who tried to talk her out of it. But she loved him.

“She and I have discussed how a person’s love for someone really has nothing to do with your body, but it has everything to do with your soul and your heart. When you’re in love with someone, you want any part of it them can have. I would tell my husband, Jim, ‘If you had only a part of you, only your little finger, still moving, I would still love you and I would still be here.’

“That was Tiffany’s mentality with Jerome. She’s just loved him so much.”

— by Brett Hoffman