The Second Act

At Feedstore BBQ, the walls don’t just hold photos: they hold stories. Longtime regulars, community staples, snapshots of a place woven into Southlake’s identity. Inside the “Barrel Room,” walls strewn with family photos, is a frame featuring a weathered cowboy in period costume on the set of Taylor Sheridan’s “Yellowstone” prequel, “1883” and a campaign image of a rugged cowboy pulled from a national brand shoot. A face you kind of recognize.

That face belongs to Larry Wells.

He gestures toward it with a quiet kind of disbelief. It’s not false modesty, but genuine wonder at how he ended up there.

“I asked Mike why he put that picture in the family room,” Wells says. “He said, ‘Because you are family.’”

Wells and Feedstore owner Mike Lafavers have been friends for nearly 25 years, long before the commercials and film sets, before anyone stopped him for a photo.

Like so many things in Wells’ life, it didn’t start as a plan. It started with relationships and an instinct to say yes when opportunity showed up. It started here.

A LIFE BUILT BY HAND

Before he ever stepped in front of a camera, Larry spent more than three decades building something far less visible, but no less meaningful.

A gate. Then another. And another.

"I started the business out of necessity," he says. "I couldn't find anyone to fix my own gate."

The origin goes back further than that. Larry was building big homes in Argyle and Southlake, including one he built for his own family on Lake Drive in the early 90s, and kept running into the same problem. The gates he installed would break, and nobody could fix them. So, he started tinkering. Got shocked a few times. Figured it out.

"I've always been fascinated by [gate] electronics," he says. "And it turns out, very few people can do what we do. Electricians won't touch them. Most garage door companies say they can't fix them either."

What began as a practical problem turned into a thriving gate automation company serving thousands of customers across North Texas. The business grew steadily –  never through advertising, always through trust.

"Our advertising budget is basically stickers," he laughs. "A sticker that says 'for service call…' with my phone number — that's our budget for the year. But we take care of people. If they need a part, we sell them a part. If they don't need a part, we tell them."

Over time, his son came into the fold, albeit reluctantly at first. "He said, 'Dad, I don't think you have enough to keep me busy,'" Larry recalls. "He's looked back over 12 years and said, 'I really regret saying that.' Through the pandemic, through everything, we've never missed a day."

Today, his son manages the day-to-day operations, allowing Larry to step into something entirely unexpected: a second career that didn't even begin until his mid-60s.

DISCOVERED AT 65

Wells doesn't use the word "reinvention." He prefers something simpler.

"Fate," he says.

At 65, after decades of running a successful business, Larry was discovered in a place he had visited countless times: a Tractor Supply store. He was a regular — someone who knew the products and the people well. That authenticity didn't go unnoticed.

An agent reached out, inviting him to appear in a video.

"I thought, why not? Let's try it."

That one opportunity changed everything. Tractor Supply saw something in Larry, a presence that felt genuine, grounded and distinctly Texan, and leaned into it. After the first shoot, one of their VPs pulled him aside.

"He said, 'You're the new Tractor Supply guy,'" Larry recalls. "And I said, 'What does that mean?'"

It meant print ads. Menswear campaigns for their magazines and online catalog. A commercial shot specifically for the Yellowstone series, which they flew him to Maine to film. And eventually, a voiceover contract that made him the literal voice of one of America's most recognizable rural brands.

"They kept saying, 'You need to be doing voiceover,'" he says. "So I did." 

He pauses. 

"I had a woman text me recently. She said, 'I just heard you on three different radio stations.' That made my day."

Today, Larry anchors five active Tractor Supply commercials, not just on camera, but narrating all of them. It's a portfolio most actors spend decades trying to build.

The next chapter came just as unexpectedly.

The same agent who connected him with Tractor Supply encouraged him to pursue a role in a new Western filming in Fort Worth: “1883,” part of Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan's expanding universe.

Larry made some calls, got connected with Legacy Casting, and found himself on the phone being offered two options: stand-in work for Sam Elliott, which would have meant six months away from the gate business, or a featured deputy role.

He took the deputy.

What followed was the kind of moment you don't fully process until later. Larry found himself in a room "not much bigger than this," he says, gesturing around Feedstore’s Barrel Room, with Sam Elliott, Billy Bob Thornton and Tim McGraw, all in costume, waiting for the next take.

"I'm looking around that room thinking, ‘how did I get here?’" he says. "Really think about it."

Between takes, he watched Thornton sit at the Marshal's desk, script resting in his lap, quietly running his lines while Tim McGraw lobbed “Bad Santa” jokes at him from across the room. But the moment they called action, Thornton was simply, completely on.

"He'll tell you, 'I'm just a country boy from Arkansas,'" Larry says. "But when it's time to work, he's the consummate professional."

And then there was Sam Elliott.

"Between takes, Sam and I sat on a park bench outside for 45 minutes," Larry recalls. "Just talking. He's telling me about his 50-year career. I'm telling him I'm really new, but I sure do like it." 

He shakes his head slowly. 

"Who else gets to do that?"

BUILDING MOMENTUM

After “1883,” opportunities began to stack.

Commercials. Modeling. Voiceover work. Additional roles within Sheridan's universe, including “1923.” A small role on “Yellowstone” itself: Larry plays a background cowboy, and you can't see his face.

"I don't even tell people about that one," he says, laughing.

There was a Chase Bank commercial. A campaign for UT Southwestern. A modeling gig at the Statler Hotel in downtown Dallas for J. Hilbern suits — where Larry, at 69, found himself on a runway alongside a 35-year-old model who stood six-foot-four.

"I had to go back in that dressing room and give myself a little talk," he says. "'How many other 69-year-old guys get paid to do this? Suck it up and go.'" He grins. "I did fine."

A blockchain commercial that landed him on red-carpet security detail for Dak Prescott at a Cowboys game. A chance encounter with Kevin Costner on the “Yellowstone” set, who walked over between takes and shook his hand. He admits, “I was a little starstruck just to be acknowledged."

Larry also committed to honing his craft, taking acting workshops with respected coach Roni Hummel and leaning on his son — a trained linguist — to help him master a British accent for an upcoming medieval shoot at Capernaum Studios.

"I've got five lines," he says. "I'll be fine."

FROM ACTOR TO PRODUCER

If acting was unexpected, producing was even more so.

A few years ago, a friend he'd met through a Kubota commercial, filmmaker Jeff Tucker, mentioned a traveling Christian singer who needed a music video but couldn't afford one. Larry stepped in financially and logistically.

"I don't know much about production," he says. "But I knew how to help."

That video, “Power of a Second Chance” by Justin Todd Harrod, went on to win Video of the Year at the Inspirational Country Music Awards in Nashville. It's been viewed millions of times on YouTube.

Now Larry is applying that same instinct to a larger project: “Anderson County,” an independent film currently shooting in East Texas. The film tells the true story of game wardens killed in the line of duty, which is a subject he feels personally connected to.

Larry’s not just producing it. He holds a lead role, and his twin brother Gary plays his on-screen brother ("The director said it feels so real — and I told him, well, we're just two brothers talking"), and Larry has recently been asked to narrate the film as well.

"That's going to be a new challenge," he says. "I'm up for it."

“Anderson County” is expected to hit theaters this fall.

CONNECTIONS AND COWBOYS

Along the way, Larry has built relationships with some of the most respected names in Western film — not through strategy, but through showing up in the right places over many years.

Through his work with the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo, he became friends with actors Buck Taylor and Barry Corbin. He serves as Corbin's personal security at select appearances. And when Corbin was inducted into the Texas Veterans Hall of Fame — joining the ranks of Audie Murphy, Roger Staubach and Ross Perot — it was Larry who delivered the introduction.

"Six minutes, talking about his life story," he says. "His wife called and said, 'Larry, we want you to do it.' I was so humbled he asked me."

He met Kevin Costner on the set of Yellowstone. Met Taylor Sheridan at the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame. Sat with an old Four Sixes ranch cowboy named Boots O'Neill and listened to a lifetime of stories.

"They're just people, too," he says. "They really are."

A DIFFERENT KIND OF SUCCESS

Ask Larry what drives him, and his answer is simple.

"It's about people," he says.

His daughter manages his talent account. His son runs the gate company Wells spent decades building. His twin brother has a speaking role in Anderson County. And his 16-month-old granddaughter, Landry Cline Heath, has already found her place in the family lore. Her middle name is a nod to Patsy Cline, whose songs were part of the soundtrack of Wells’ truck when his children were growing up. 

"I get to interact with my kids on a daily or weekly basis because of what I do," he says. "That, to me, is success."

And then there's the legacy.

Driving down to East Texas a few weeks ago for a shoot, Larry turned to his brother Gary and put it simply: “Think about what we're leaving behind. They'll be able to look at this 20 years from now and say, that's my grandpa.”

In a culture that often frames aging as decline, Larry offers a different narrative. One of expansion.

At 70, he's not slowing down. He's got a table read coming up for an undisclosed film. A TV series in development with a Kansas filmmaker. The Anderson County narration still ahead of him. A medieval shoot at Capernaum Studios. A Purple Heart event at the Stock Show. And those Tractor Supply commercials are still running nationally.

Last September, he drove to Bastrop, Texas, to speak to a room of about 100 aspiring actors and actresses. He told them his story. And then he told them something else.

"There are a lot of people out there better looking than I am," he said. "A lot more qualified, a lot more experienced. I dare any of you to try to outwork me."

He's also taken that message beyond the film world, speaking to seniors in particular about pushing past comfort zones and chasing something new.

"Don't sit around and get old," he says. "It's inevitable that we age. But don't be afraid to try something."

THE LUCKIEST GUY AROUND

Larry will tell you he's been lucky.

But listen a little longer, and you realize his definition of luck is anything but passive.

"Luck is when opportunity meets persistence and patience," he says.

It's a formula he's lived, from tinkering with a broken gate in the early days of his career to sitting on a park bench with Sam Elliott between takes on a film set in Fort Worth. From Feedstore BBQ customer to face on the wall.

He tells a story about a recent Sunday lunch — alone at Feedstore, late afternoon — when co-owner Matt Lafavers’s wife came over with a group of friends and asked if they could get a picture with him. He obliged, of course. But the look on his face when he recounts it says everything.

“That’s so foreign to me,” he says, smiling. “I just don’t get it.”

And yet that’s exactly the point. For this man, who is now the face of a national brand, but still frequents the same local lunch spot he’s been coming to for 25 years, the second act didn't just arrive. He stepped into it.And he's just getting started.