It’s Friday afternoon, and Kenny Arthur calmly walks out of his office, through the kitchen, and into the dining area of his new Chick-fil-A restaurant in Harvest Town Center at FM 407 and I-35W. Everything is as it should be—families are seated and enjoying their meals, and each team member smiles from ear to ear while taking orders and keeping cars flowing seamlessly in and out of all three drive-thru lanes.
The delicious smell of chicken is undeniable, and heard loud and clear countless times amongst the constant chatter is, “My pleasure,” the trademark response team members give each time a customer thanks them for a job well done.
“I’ve been an owner-operator practically from the moment I walked through the doors at Chick-fil-A 26 years ago, and I genuinely mean it when I say I love everything they stand for,” Arthur said. He and his family have lived in Argyle for 15 years. “It’s more than just serving great-tasting chicken. It can be like a ministry. Every day, I get to mentor and work with great people.”
He added, “Chick-fil-A is my first love career-wise.”
Well, that may not be entirely true.
Anyone who closely follows Argyle High School sports knows Kenny Arthur as one of the familiar, dependable, and fun-loving voices for Argyle sports radio alongside Andy Smith, Clark McNulty, Mitch Cullen, and Blake Jones. He’s been a play-by-play and color commentator for the Eagles since 2012, starting with football and eventually including baseball and basketball.
And boy, have he and the crew called some good ones over the years.
Over the past 12 years, he’s lent his professional broadcasting skills and gift of gab to more than 20 state title game appearances. That doesn’t include countless state-ranked showdowns, district championship games, regional matchups, and rivalry games.
A few of those include Argyle football’s state title wins in 2013 and 2020 and the baseball team’s 37-0 season in 2018. He’s still every bit in the driver’s seat today as the Eagles football team continues district competition enroute to what should be another deep playoff run. In each instance, he wraps up his day at Chick-fil-A—his new store is barely a month old, by the way—just in time to high-tail it to whatever stadium press box he’s supposed to be at later that night.
And if you ask those who have worked with or listened to him, it’s obvious how much he loves doing radio.
“He’s a pro, and he really gets into it,” Andy Smith said. Smith initially recruited Arthur to their radio team all those years ago. “Even last night, he was trying to get his new Chick-fil-A store up and running. But he committed to being there for us and got there in plenty of time to do what he does best. Just listen to him once—it’s absolutely fair to say Kenny has more than one first love.”
Arthur hesitated to call his radio gig a career like Chick-fil-A, but he is undoubtedly making the most of it.
“I do love broadcasting—I mean, Joe Buck gets paid a lot of money to do what I like as a hobby,” he said with a laugh. “They like to say I’m pretty good at what I do, but I prefer to remain humble. I’ll keep doing it until I can’t think straight anymore.”
Get Arthur reminiscing, and he’ll be the first to admit that Chick-fil-A wasn’t on his immediate career radar.
His degree from Baylor is in Radio, Television, and Film. He trained under the late Frank Fallon, who called men’s basketball and football games for the Bears for 42 years, and his pie-in-the-sky goal was to one day carve out a similar path for himself—possibly calling Texas Rangers games instead of the legendary Eric Nadel.
For one reason or another, that career never quite took off. “Out of those four radio stations (I worked for), I think three no longer exist. So, maybe I was the problem,” he said with a laugh. “Actually, let’s look at it this way—I was so good that when I left each station, they lost listeners and went out of business. Let’s go with that.
“The reality is that I had a wife and daughter at the time, and I knew I needed to make a change.”
As luck would have it, Arthur was introduced to Chick-fil-A by his brother-in-law, Jay Schumacher, now the local owner-operator of two Chick-fil-A restaurants in Plano and Frisco. The year was 1998, and Chick-fil-A was still a growing brand located almost exclusively in shopping malls. Arthur’s first store was in a low-volume mall in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He spent nearly three years there before transferring to North East Mall in Hurst for the next eight years.
He spent the past 15 and a half years at the Chick-fil-A on Justin Road in Flower Mound before taking over his new store in Argyle.
It’s the perfect spot for Kenny and his wife, Suzie, who have been ingrained in the Argyle community since they moved there in July 2009. All four of their daughters (Kaetlin, Gracie, Paige, and Brooke) went through Argyle ISD. Brooke is the youngest and just started the eighth grade. Kaetlin, Gracie, and Paige have all since graduated from high school.
“Suzie and I grew up in smaller towns and wanted our kids to do the same thing. We were sold once we saw Argyle and what it had to offer,” Arthur said. “I knew I wanted to get involved and be part of the community in any way we could.”
Little did he know then that “getting involved” meant returning to the radio booth.
“I still don’t know how Andy Smith got my number or email,” Arthur said. “I didn’t know him, but he mentioned that he heard I had broadcasting experience. The next thing I know, I’m sitting in the booth for Argyle football.”
In those days, getting a single broadcast up and running in time was much harder. But the crew has become a well-oiled machine and has plenty of fun memories to show for it. Beyond being the voice behind iconic victories in numerous sports and covering star athletes, some of Arthur’s favorite memories include the late nights, trips with the boys to Lubbock, Abilene, San Antonio, Houston, Austin, and all points in between, and even the not-so-graceful moments that have become part of the job.
For instance, there were several times they had to use a scissor lift to broadcast games from behind the press box in Celina because there wasn’t any room in the press box or the stands. Throughout the game, they were worried that the entire contraption would fall over due to high winds or just plain old dumb luck.
There was also the time a cold front blew through during a game in Pleasant Grove, taking the outside temperature from a comfortable 70 degrees to below 40 in the second half.
All Arthur and the boys—who were again stuck outside—had to protect themselves were loose-fitting t-shirts and shorts.
“There are too many great memories to count,” Arthur said. “I remember being the play-by-play guy for the football state title game in 2013, but I couldn’t help but think about all the great things Andy had done to get the radio stuff up and going before I even got there. I knew how much it meant to him, so I stepped aside so that he could do play-by-play. As it turned out, the Eagles won that game.
He added, “The broadcasting stuff at Argyle and my career at Chick-fil-A have meant so much to me. It helps that I do all of it in a community I love and enjoy. I grew up in Denison and lived there for the first 18-plus years of my life. The people and community of Denison will always have a special place in my heart, but Argyle has been home now for almost that long, and I can’t imagine being anywhere else.”
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