They say that behind every great man is a great woman. You’ll hear no arguments from the PBR family.

From wives, mothers and girlfriends to stock contractors and broadcasters, the Women of the PBR play many important roles.

Throughout the 2019 season, we’ll be sharing some of their perspectives on the PBR, fashion and the Western lifestyle.

In today’s Q&A, we chatted with Sarah and Sadie Berger, wife and daughter of stock contractor Chad Berger, about the complexities of working in a family business, how it’s affected their relationships and what those Berger family dinners look like.

PBR.com: Thanks for chatting with us today! To get things started, what does your daily life look like as stock contractors?

Sadie Berger: We have totally different roles. I kind of do a lot of different things. Merchandising, sales, marketing, help with the bulls. I’m a jack of all trades. Master of all.

Sarah Berger: And myself, I’m handing some things over. And I’ve never been hands-on with the bulls. I’ve always done book work, and I’m kind of passing that down to her and her sister. But our event that we put on in June, our Touring Pro, I work on that. It’s a year’s worth of work in about three months.

PBR.com: Sarah, were you involved in the bucking bull industry before you got married?

Sarah: No. I was not a rodeo girl, I was a band girl. So no, not at all. But I love it! I do love it.

PBR.com: Sadie, was it ever a question for you that you were going to do this after being around it your whole life?

Sadie: Yeah, I’ve grown up with it. My grandpa started raising bulls in the 1960s and my dad decided to follow in his footsteps, so it’s just something that our family has always been doing. So it’s just part of our lives. There were times that I thought I wanted to do other things but it seems like I always come back to this. My whole life, my friendships, my relationships all kind of revolve around bull riding, so it just kind of makes sense.

PBR.com: What’s it like working so closely with people you’re related to?

[Sadie mimes choking Sarah – they both laugh]

Sadie: It’s a lot like that! Not so much with her and I, but with my dad. He is very… set in his ways. And he knows what he wants, and if it’s not his idea he probably doesn’t want to hear it.

Sarah: And her and her dad are just a lot alike.

Sadie: It’s very fun and it’s very nice. I mean, I live a luxurious lifestyle, not in a sense that I drive a BMW and that kind of thing, but I get to work with my family. When I’m traveling I get to spend time with my friends. So it’s very humbling and I’m very appreciative of that.

Sarah: A family business has got its ups and got its downs, but I feel like for the most part, we’re up.

PBR.com: How do you draw the line between business and personal? Sarah, being mom, are you the boss sometimes and the mom sometimes?

Sarah: Yeah, I’m not too bossy. When we start working on Bismarck PBR, the event, that’s when I turn into it. I apologize to my family ahead of time for how I’m going to be acting in the weeks leading up to it. But now, I’m a grandma, first of all. That’s my most important thing.

Sadie: We all have our roles, and we know our roles, so it’s pretty easy for us to figure everything out. Because we’ve been doing it for so long and we know what we’re doing, I guess.

PBR.com: Do you guys ever take a vacation from each other? Does it ever get to be too much to the point where you need a break?

Sadie: I move to Oklahoma for the winter by myself. [laughs] And that’s my little getaway, because every time I’m back, it’s like, ‘Oh, it’s time for you to go back again.’ Otherwise, though, my dad’s on the road a lot on weekends, so they’re apart quite a bit on the weekends. We all have our own spaces and our own homes and stuff. It’s a good way to break things up.

PBR.com: What are holidays and family dinners like? Do you guys talk shop or do you leave bull talk at the door?

Sadie: Oh, no, if you were ever to come to a Berger family (dinner) – especially my Berger family – it’s bulls and cattle and cowboys and old glory days stories of bull riding back in ’76 or whatever. A lot of times we talk business, but we enjoy ourselves and have fun.

Sarah: My side of the family is a little crazier.

Sadie: But my mom’s family – she grew up in town and stuff – they all pretty much married cattle men of some sort, so we have Western traditions on both sides.

PBR.com: Do you feel like working together has brought you guys closer together?

Sadie: Yeah, I definitely feel like that. We have our internal arguments and things that we don’t see eye-to-eye on, but it has definitely made us stronger.

Sarah: And you guys probably, you and Lacey, talk about me and dad.

Sadie: Oh yeah! I was just so mad at my dad the other day – so mad at him – and then somebody put something on Facebook, like a negative thing about him, and I got so furious I cried! I was so mad that someone would say something about him! There’s no bad in him! He’s such a generous, caring person, and it made me so mad that I cried. He had made me cry the day before because he hung up on me on the phone, and the next day I was crying because somebody was saying something about him. So that’s kind of our life.

Sarah: We stick up for each other.

Sadie: Yes, we do.

Sarah: But we do that and talk about each other. [laughs]

You can check out the latest collections with Montana Silversmithshere. Stay tuned next month as we talk with another of the Women of the PBR.