OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. — Bob Mills, the Oklahoma City furniture retailer who became a household name across Oklahoma as the self-described working man’s friend, died Monday, Nov. 9, at age 79, his family announced on the company’s social media page.
The family has not given a cause of death, and funeral and memorial arrangements had not been set as of Monday. They said the business will keep operating under the family’s guidance.
Mills opened his first store on July 3, 1971, in a former grocery building at 2526 SW 29 in south Oklahoma City, paying for it with $25,000 borrowed from his mother. He was 23. Eight employees worked there at the start, and a business partner who had encouraged him to go into the venture left soon after. Mills kept going and expanded the operation into a chain of large stores in Oklahoma and neighboring states.
Born in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947, Mills moved to Oklahoma City with his family at about age 13. He finished Putnam City High School in 1965. He studied music and business at Southwestern Oklahoma State University in Weatherford and later said his years playing in a rock band taught him a good deal about business.
That musical background shaped his advertising. In 1973 he began a country-western television show for the store, with employees who played instruments, and over its run the program featured Merle Haggard and Charlie Daniels. It ended in 1982. As the years passed, Mills traded sweaters for suits and let the working man’s friend slogan fade, though he remained the face of the stores’ television ads; commercials with him were still airing as of Sunday.
Mills backed local charities, among them Allied Arts, Boys & Girls Clubs of America and the regional food bank, and he was inducted into Oklahoma City University’s Oklahoma Commerce and Industry Hall of Honor. His wife and three children survive him, and the children are involved in running the company.
Section: More Oklahoma City OK business news
Filed under: Oklahoma City OK Business News
