"I knew that he was going to be a professional athlete of some sort because he had so much God-given talent," his dad Ned Jarrett said. "I really thought he was going to be a pro golfer more than anything else." In fact, Dale had been offered a golf scholarship to the University of South Carolina but turned it down because he wasn’t sure that is where he wanted to go.
Instead, Dale got a job at Hickory Motor Speedway doing any odd job the speedway needed done. "You could say I lacked direction," Jarrett said. "But every day during lunch, I'd set up my little driving range behind the racetrack and hit balls into an empty parking lot. I was really into golf before racing came along."
Dale finally decided to give driving a try at the age of 20, when he started putting together a car with high school friends Andy Petree, now a NASCAR team owner, and Jimmy Newsome. In his debut race at Hickory, Jarrett started 25th and finished ninth. Dale had finally been bitten by the racing bug.
While Dale was struggling to make a name for himself, he met his future wife Kelley, who knew immediately that their life together wasn't going to be normal. "He would work on his race car at the shop until 9 or 10 at night, and I just couldn't understand why he wasn't coming home for these home-cooked meals," said Kelley, who was a fifth-grade teacher back then. "Well, I realized right then we weren't going to be June and Ward Cleaver."
Despite that, Dale, who earned the 1999 NASCAR championship, says all the struggles were worth the rewards. "My racing career has been a struggle because I never had any money, so it has been one slow step at a time," Jarrett said. "But I'm a believer that things are brought to you when you're ready for them. It's just taken me a long time to be ready for this."
