Bill McCartney was an award-winning football coach at the University of Colorado in 1990 when he felt a call to found Promise Keepers during a three-hour drive from a football game.
He was born in 1940 in Riverview, Michigan, into an Irish Catholic family and grew up in Detroit. While working as a football coach he was inspired by one of the players to become a born-again Christian. He says he joined a Pentecostal church because he could not find a Catholic parish to meet his needs.
His wife Linda also made a commitment to Christ soon after his conversion. They have four grown-up children. His daughter has had two children by two of her father's football players.
Three years after getting the inspiration for PK, McCartney and his helpers were able to fill the Denver football stadium with 50,000 men who prayed and pledged to be better husbands.
In 1994 he retired from coaching and gave himself full-time to PK, which has held over 60 events in the US in the past seven years and a number in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, where it now has permanent offices, with plans to expand to Norway, the Netherlands and South Africa.
He does not get a salary but is paid about $4,000 each time he addresses a PK assembly. He is also paid for "motivational speeches" to the sales staff of Pillow Kingdom Inc., which makes water beds.
His autobiography is called Ashes To Glory. He describes his interests as "spending time with family, golf, bike-riding".
