Star of A&E's hit reality TV show Duck Dynasty Miss Kay has this week shared of her battle to save her marriage in one of her most candid interviews yet.
The Robertson family live in West Monroe, Louisiana and are famed for their home-grown business, 'Duck Commander', which makes a staggering $45 million a year. They are devout Christians and are well known for their strong faith and willingness to speak out about their beliefs.
Their journey to faith hasn't been easy, however. Miss Kay married husband Phil when she was just 16, and the couple have been open about his struggle with drug and alcohol addiction as a young man. It led to a crisis point where Phil forced Miss Kay and their three young children to leave home, and it was then that he came to know Christ through a chance meeting with a Christian in a bar.
In an interview with Fox411, Miss Kay has now opened up about those days, and how she made the decision to stay with Phil despite his abuse, which even led her to consider committing suicide.
"The worst advice I ever got was when they told me to leave him," she reveals.
"I attribute a lot of [staying with Phil] to my grandma. She was such a stickler for staying with your marriage. She always used to say, 'You have to fight for your marriage'...When I say, 'I love you,' it's for life.
"If we would not have stayed together I would have known in my heart that I had done everything I could possibly do to make that marriage work."
Miss Kay says that she always trusted the God would change her husband's heart, even when she discovered that he had been unfaithful. "When I first fell in love with Phil there were so many good characteristics about him and I knew he had a good heart," she says.
"I told my kids, 'Your dad is a good man. He has a good heart but right now he's letting the devil control him and that's who we should hate – the devil and not Phil. We'll pray and pray that the devil will leave him but he has to make the choice to do that'.
"Eventually he did make the right choice. I think that's why my heart and my kids were easy to forgive too."
Miss Kay shared that the family have been able to completely move on and enjoy life to the full, despite their chequered past. "That Phil's dead and buried. He's a new Phil now," she says.
She also notes that the Robertson family has never been anything but honest and truthful about their journey, and want to show people the joys of having faith through their reality TV show; an opportunity which they have in the past referred to as "God-given".
"If you're a Christian you don't have to be holier than thou. We always say this: 'You can't be so heavenly minded you're no earthly good'," she adds.
"We show regular people that we Christians have a blast. How you see us is how we really are."
