Meet Mrs. Ike — Becky Iaconelli Runs the Show

Perhaps my first question should have been, “Do you ever sleep?”

If Becky Iaconelli isn’t pulling a trailer, hanging out on the back of her son’s boat, chasing after her “moose,” digging in her garden, concocting a batch of something in her kitchen, getting fashion advice from her daughter or running her husband’s company, then perhaps she might be getting some shuteye.

Mike “Ike” Iaconelli may be the 2003 Bassmaster Classic champ, television personality and podcast host, but his primary role is Becky’s husband. I’m thankful that the professional Wonder Woman had time to fit me in to provide us all with further insight into everything that makes her Becky.

HPFC: How and where did you meet Mike?

Becky Iaconelli: It was 2006 and I was living and working in Washington DC. I worked for a liquor distributor and since we were a union warehouse, we shut down the third week in July and the third week in August. This off time made it your vacation. You didn’t get to pick vacation, this was your vacation.

My girlfriends and I from work hadn’t come up with any plans, and we couldn’t just sit around so one of my girlfriends had a friend from college who was the director of entertainment at the MGM Grand. She called him up and he's like, “Come on out here. I'll make sure you guys have a fun time.”

So we booked flights and headed out to the MGM Grand in Las Vegas and we were going to just have a fun girls trip. Her friend was taking us out, entertaining us taking us to restaurants and all sorts of fun places. He knew the guy who managed Red Bull in Vegas, who also knew Byron Velvick. I remember he was taking everybody around for ICAST so I ended up in the same party as Mike.

He was there for ICAST. I was there just having a fun girl’s trip. We were introduced to each other and that's the end of the story. He was driving through Washington DC a week later and we saw each other, and we've never looked back.

HPFC: Did you know who Mike was when you met him?

Becky Iaconelli: Nope, not a clue. I did not fish. I'd never fished, knew nothing about fishing.

It was very bizarre because people kept interrupting us and coming up and wanting to talk to him, which I found very annoying and very rude. When you're having a conversation with someone why would you stop and talk to other people? What is wrong with these people that they would be interrupting us? I just thought that it was very rude of him and these other people.

Then my girlfriend started to pick up something: Who is this guy? Like, what does he do?

When he told me he fished, honest to God, I said to him, “Can you pay your own bills?” Not that I needed someone who was going to take care of me, but I just needed someone equal because I could pay my own bills.

So, when he said he fished for a living I'm like, “Oh seriously, like can you pay your own bills?” and Mike said, “Yeah, I do okay.”

All right fine, as long as you can pay your own bills.

Little did I know he was fine. He could pay his bills.

HPFC: How has Mike changed since you first met him?

Becky Iaconelli: Great question, I really must think about that for a second. We were way younger. I don't know if much has changed. I think he has slightly more control of his emotions now because we've really worked on that. He's Italian so he's clearly highly emotional.

If he's happy, you know it.

If he's mad, you know it.

If he’s sad, you know it.

He wears it all on his sleeves and I'm from the northeast so that never fazed me. I grew up with it as well -- just wear your emotions on your sleeve.

I have come to realize, especially in the fishing world, people didn't appreciate that or understand that. We have spent a lot of time working on trying to hide some of the emotions when everyone's watching. Just wait and you can have them when you get home. So I think he's a bit more controlled with his emotions now. Other than that, he's still crazy, high energy, fun, wild Mike.

Mike and I always have 20 projects going at one time. He was a father then, he's a father now. We went from two kids to four kids. None of that stuff ever really changed who he is. He has always been the same, but I would say probably just a little bit more controlled.

HPFC: How did your job title change when you added kids into the mix?

Becky Iaconelli: So early on Mike figured out that I needed a job. I wasn't going to stay on the road with him if I didn't have a purpose because I always had a career. He very quickly figured out that he was trying to grow a brand and a business, but he was also trying to fish and it was too much to handle.

He ended up giving me a lot of the business, such as communicating with the sponsors and negotiating contracts. Once the kids came into the mix, I was doing it just for him and I was doing it on the road. We were like traveling gypsies all of us with our wagons, going from town to town. The men would go fishing and the women and babies would be at the campground. We've helped each other raise kids and I was running the business. The moment that Vegas started school, and I knew I couldn't home school, I needed to come home.

He needed to be in school. I knew that everything had to shift and I wasn't going to be able to just be a stay-at-home mom and just handle him.

So I took over the reins of the entire business and decided that I wanted to grow the business so that I had a purpose. I also did this so that someday if Mike said, “I don't want to tournament fish, I am tired of tournament fishing, I don't want everything to be contingent on me and I'm stuck and locked into this.”

I wanted to make it so that we had opportunities, he had opportunities, to make choices as we got older. I grew our marketing company and brought on a bunch of other anglers. Our podcast formed an entire team that basically sold sponsorships. We handle all the back-end accounting. We work with the guys with sponsor fulfillment. I have a team of seven full-time people, which went from just representing Mike to representing all these other people and properties as well.

So you ask about my role -- guess my role just grew from what I was already doing along with being a mom and a wife.

HPFC: When the family travels together, what do you travel and live in?

Becky Iaconelli: If you know anything about Mike and me, we can't do anything small or simple. We had never camped a day in our lives and Estella was born so we could no longer just travel out of the Toyota renting houses. We had too much crap with two babies. We went out and bought ourselves a 43-foot fifth wheel, as if that would be easy. We figured this out and to be honest there was probably a learning curve of two days and then like we just had to make it happen. We've been living out of a two-bedroom fifth wheel since Estella was born.

HPFC: Becky, do you fish now?

Becky Iaconelli: I do. Back when I started dating Mike, I was on the road with him. In those days you could still have someone on the boat with you to practice fish. I spent years on the boat with him, 12 plus hours a day, during practice days before an Elite event. I was indoctrinated very quickly from the amount of time I spent on the water with him and I learned to love the process. I love the puzzle because I was always part of that. I never had days where the fish were just there. There was never a day where we just hung out and caught fish all day, which would have been magical. I've never had that experience. I've only ever had the experience where we must figure out the puzzle.

I remember practice days in Florida where Mike is struggling and I finally have a fish on Mike says, “Do not set the hook. I'm going to need that fish for the tournament.” I would go days without ever catching fish.

But there were also magical moments being on Lake Erie and getting on a school a smallmouth, with 10-foot swells, where you just want to vomit, but you don't want to leave because you were catching smallmouth after smallmouth.

I obviously don't get to fish as much anymore but I am on a boat all the time. I went from fishing with Mike to now Vegas fishes tournaments, and I stand on the boat with him all day as his boat captain for youth events. Although I don't think I get to fish much anymore, I have literally been on a boat and around fish ever since I met Mike.

HPFC: Besides being Mom and business owner, what are your hobbies?

Becky Iaconelli: I love to garden. Ohhhhh, I love to garden. When I was a kid, I always said I was going to be a landscape architect because I wanted The Secret Garden as my backyard. Just crazy amounts of flowers, trees, bushes and secret little spaces.

When Mike said to me, “I've got this property on a lake. It’s farmland. It's wide open, do you want to build a house?” I immediately said, “Let's do it.”

And that’s what we did, we built a house on this farmland. There was nothing here when we moved and now my backyard is like that crazy wild wonderland that I always dreamed of when I was a kid. Dry creek beds, flowers, little ponds everywhere that I forced Mike to help me dig out and put in. It’s a little crazy, but it's fun.

I also like to bake. I love to cook. I love to cook and bake.

I started “Baking with Becky” so that people can see me in the kitchen, which is humorous because I'm really not that good and I break kitchen appliances all the time, but I love to do it.

My theory, you watch all these people on TV on these cooking shows and they're amazing at it and they never make mistakes and I really wanted someone to be on the Internet or on TV that was just like a poop show. You know what I mean - like a real person in the kitchen.

Mike was like, “I don't know if this is going to work,” but I was going forward with it anyway.

It's very homemaker of me to garden and to cook. Who would have thought?

HPFC: What are your favorite places to go on tour?

Becky Iaconelli: My first choice is the St. Lawrence River up in New York. I just don't know why but upstate New York is just gorgeous and it's magical. There's all these little islands and people build homes on them. The other reason is the campground there is wonderful. When you wake up even in the dead of the summer, they're still those cool crisp mornings. I am not a hot weather person; I will never move out of the Northeast. I love cold. I love cool mornings. I hate humidity and the weather up there is perfect.

My kids and I love to go to Canada. The kids think that they're smuggling Kinder Eggs back, because the Kinder Egg, unlike the Kinder chocolate eggs in the US, these are not allowed to be “imported” from Canada and Europe. My kids always think that they're like little hoodlums because they're getting real Kinder Eggs. If you can't have any in the US, then they're smuggling something, and they think that’s cool.

I think that's probably my favorite part of the country. I love-love-love the St Lawrence for that reason.

Probably nowhere in Florida except that I love to go to Disney. I have such crazy memories of Florida, like when Vegas took an umbrella to the face at the St. Johns River. There's just crazy weird memories down there that I'm like no, no, no.

Havasu was gorgeous but we only got to go once. I thought the landscape was gorgeous. Like just the beauty of it all and the fact that we got to travel across the country to go out there because when you're hauling our rigs. You get to see so much.

But you can just leave me in New York, I’m a Northeasterner, I don't even ever want to leave the Northeast.

HPFC: What are your favorite places to eat on tour?

Becky Iaconelli: Wow, this isn't on tour but when we had to travel out to California many moons ago, we had a few weeks to get out there. We decide to just take our time with the kids and we just stopped along the way at Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas. The place lets you spray paint the Cadillacs that are in the ground. Estella, of course, wasn’t paying attention, I think she was not even two years old yet and she spray painted her face green.

We look like crazy people and then we found this shack, like literally a shack, I think you could see through the floor to the dirt ground, but everyone raved that this was the place to get burgers. And oh my God, it was! I'm not even huge burger person, but it was…..mmmmmm…..the burgers, the fries, everything. Old-time malted shakes, like the original everything. If you wanted a soda it was just in an ice chest. And no one looked at us funny even with our green kid. It just was the most amazing burger, meal and people gathering.

HPFC: What are your favorite meals to cook when you're on the road?

Becky Iaconelli: I have tried a lot of random things in the camper. And the one thing I learned very early on is to keep it very very simple because you're limited. I used to try to do a lot of crock pot meals and I just kind of caved and I keep it simple. The kids love burgers and dogs and I do them out on the grill. Keep it simple with pastas. That I do a lot of, such as the veggie pasta, the gluten free pasta just to change it up, or raviolis. We’re so Italian, eating pasta and meatballs. But in the camper, I keep it all really simple when it comes to food.

Vegas and Estella love to make pancakes and eggs. When Mike is out on the water and we're holed up in the camper because it's raining, they are always whipping up some sort of eggs and pancakes. There are always ingredients in order for them to concoct. They always whipping up something and they eat very well when we're in the camper. I let them try to have fun and it keeps them entertained.

HPFC: What are the biggest mishaps that have happened to you on the road?

Becky Iaconelli: The entire deal about getting a camper was interesting for us. Most campers are not even rated properly for the tires that they put on them when you get the camper. Let’s say your camper ways like 13,000 pounds without anything in it, the tires are only good for about 10,000. We learned very quickly as we blew out three tires in one day, and you don't carry that many spares. So that was an experience.

Rolling into DC was tire number two.

Finally crossing over to New Jersey was tire number three.

We abandoned the camper on the side of the road, and I had to find somebody who could come and help me put on another tire on just to get it home.

Three times in one day was a doozy.

We had a leaf spring break in the panhandle of Texas. We were so lucky because there was nothing, if you've been to the panhandle of Texas, there's literally nothing out there.

Mike was driving behind me and calls to tell me the camper is leaning sideways, pull over, we’ve got to figure out what's going on and we figured out the leaf spring had busted.

Thank the Lord there happened to be this old campground, barely even running, weeds everywhere, could barely pull into a spot but it existed, and it was only a couple of miles away. We limped there that night and in the morning there happened to be this truck metal fabrication business in this town. It was like the only thing in town, perhaps because there were so many trucks that were coming through the Panhandle. Literally this was the only shop that fabricated metal for the truckers and they recreated the part that broke on our camper and put it back together for us. How we got so lucky to have all that happen was amazing. And more amazing that this all happened with two infants, no troubles and repaired on the spot, we were just lucky and very fortunate.

Oh, the first time I ever had to drive the camper was at Grand Lake. Estella was just born, she was born in September of 2012. This was in the classic of ‘13 and Mike had driven the camper out because we had literally picked it up a week prior and headed out to Grand Lake. He does really well in that classic and they need him to come back down to Tulsa and film some stuff for Yamaha.

He says as soon as I'm done filming you are going to get everything packed up and I’ll meet you back up here at the campground, which is an hour back north, because the lake and the city are an hour apart.

I'm watching the Doppler and there's a nasty storm, tornado type storm, coming towards us. I can't sit here at the campground waiting to be whacked by a storm. This is not smart so I somehow, all on my own, with a six-month-old and a one-year-old, figure out how to put the fifth wheel on the truck, hook it up, close the slides, pull in the electricity (I mean, I have no idea what I am doing), strapped the two children in and just start driving towards our next destination.

I called Mike and said, “I'm hitting the road” and he's like, “Okay, I'll meet you at Bull Shoals,” and I did. I did that that drive all by myself, trying to stay ahead of the storm. By the time Mike found me at Bull Shoals, I said to the lady at the campground, please just give me a pull-through site. I could not have backed this rig up even if I wanted to, I was so stressed out. She gave me a pull through and by the time Mike got there the truck was still attached to the camper, but the slides were open, the kids were very happy and I was sitting there drinking a beer.

I'm here. I'm here. I did it. We survived.

Hauling the camper through the mountains, Oh Lord that was stressful.

On the fishing side, craziest thing that ever happened -- Mike hooked me right through the eyelid. We were at Del Rio, we had just come from Falcon, on a back-to-back with Amistad, as Mike made it to Sunday. We drove through the night, got to Amistad and we got maybe three hours of sleep and we are back on the water.

First thing that morning, because Mike is not missing any time on the water. There is no chance that he's going to choose sleep over practice hours. So even if it's one hour of sleep, he’s up, back on that boat and you're practicing.

I was in the back of the boat. I don't even think I was awake yet, just drinking a coffee. I haven't even stood up to start fishing. The next thing I know he gets all excited: “You're never gonna believe these beds, I've never seen beds this big. You have to come look at them.” I'm on the front of the boat with him, it's just never been a thing, the back of the boat’s mine, front of the boat is his.

I'm standing there, with him looking at the beds. And because he's sound asleep, doesn't remember that I'm standing right next to him, he casts. Because he wasn't awake yet. He was throwing a frog. There's no reason for him to be throwing a frog, he just wasn't even awake yet. Thank God it was a frog and wasn't treble hook as it hooked me right through the eyelid. After a few painful moments of us trying to figure out what to do, it just literally rips through the skin and came out and all was fine. Later I ended up with a Shiner from my forehead down below my eye. I mean, I looked like a battered woman, which I'm sure people who knew Mike and his temper -- I am sure there were some rumors that flew around that week. I was this bruised, battered new girlfriend on the road with Mike Iaconelli. But it was a frog to the face and I survived.

I can mention that we just had to pull treble hooks out of the puppy two days ago. He got into some hooks and we needed to do the line trick and get them out. Thank goodness the line trick didn’t become an option for my eye and it just fell out.

HPFC: That’s right, you recently got a puppy. Are you two crazy?

Becky Iaconelli: I can't believe we got a puppy. He's so cute. He's absolutely amazing. But he's already around 60 pounds and he's only six months. He's going to be a moose.

HPFC: Through Mike’s promotional appearances and TV shows you’ve been to a lot of amazing places which ones stand out?

Becky Iaconelli: I've always loved Europe. Every time that we get a chance to go over to Europe stands out.

When we did Italy a few years ago, Mike and I had a magical time and it was just the two of us. Then through his TV show with Nat Geo he got to go London. I called my parents up and said I really would love to meet Mike in London with the kids because it would be a great experience for them, and it would be so much fun. I just don't know if I could do those flights by myself with the kids, they are great travelers but my parents, who love to travel as well, said, “All right, let's go. Let's do it.”

My mom had a friend who had a flat in London. She hooked us up with a three-bedroom flat approximately three blocks from Buckingham Palace. I don't even know how my mom has this friend, it's crazy and we had the most amazing time. The kids were in heaven and that's when I realized that my kids wanted to see other parts of the world. Like, they loved the US but I mean not the way that they love Canada and then they fell in love with London.

When Mike had to go to Spain for the Euro Cup a few years ago, I found these ridiculously cheap flights to Paris and figured it was meant to be, we must go. We took the kids with us and traveled and explored Paris first.

Estella, for whatever reason, has been obsessed with Paris since the time she could talk. I don't know why, it's not like we talked about Paris all the time. She must have read a book or seen something. To Estella it isn’t the Eiffel Tower, it’s the Paris tower: “The Paris tower. I have to go. I have to go.” This trip was her birthday present, in lieu of you know gifts, tchotchkes and toys.

We went to Paris and we had the most amazing time. The kids ate snails and we were in heaven. They wanted to see everything. We went by the Eiffel Tower (the Paris Tower) every single day just so she could see it because she was in awe of it. We went to the Louvre and we all thought that was amazing.

Paris was really really special and seeing it through their eyes made it even more fun than our Italy trip, which was fabulous. When you see something through the eyes of a child, like the first time going to Disney with a kid, seeing Mickey Mouse for the first time, it's so real to them. Seeing Paris through the eyes of my children was just so magical and watching Estella take it all in made this trip that much more outstanding and exciting.

HPFC: What are some places you've yet to visit that are still on your bucket list?

Becky Iaconelli: Oh my gosh, I have so many so many, COVID is killing me for this very reason. If you if are a traveler this is awful. I have all the basics. I’m really dying to get to Alaska. Hawaii, Australia and New Zealand are major bucket list.

One of the immediate bucket list destinations I have and am really really trying to figure out if I can make happen this fall, if only the Canadians will let us in, is going up to St. John Island in Nova Scotia. If you sit on a certain beach there, you're the first person in North America to see the sunrise. For some reason, it's some weird bucket list thing of mine.

Mike and I are talking about how to work this in as the kids are going to end up doing e-learning. Why don't we just do e-learning from the camper and let's go see all of the Northeast. The kids haven’t seen all of Massachusetts, Maine and Rhode Island. I mean we've done drip drops, but we just thought let's go do all this stuff. Let's go see, Salem, Massachusetts during Halloween, probably really fun and the best time to visit. Then, stay on the road do all the other states up north. But if the Canadians open the borders, I will get to see the sunrise at St. John.

HPFC: What is the long-term goal for you: Stay on tour? Get off tour? Move? Although we know you aren’t moving from where you are because you love, love, love the Northeast.

Becky Iaconelli: I guess my long-term goal is to keep Mike tournament fishing but only as long as he wants to. He truly would love, at some point, to transition to TV. He wants that flexibility, where he can get himself to a position to perhaps transition into TV where he can say I can film this week but not on this day because I've got to get back home. I'm not missing such and such family event. I think that would be my ultimate goal and not that he wants to leave tournament fishing, he just doesn't want to miss out on life. I would like for us to be able to be in a position where he can keep doing what he loves, he can keep fishing, but maybe with flexibility to have quality of life.

HPFC: What advice would you give the future wife of Vegas the Hammer?

Becky Iaconelli: Oh God, I would probably apologize first, Good Lord. I try so hard not having him turn out exactly like his father. Wow. I think you must be patient, Vegas is a special special little boy. He is so creative and he is in his own world. He's this engineer and he's the wild little man with everything going on up there. I think, I pray to God, that he finds a woman someday that just loves, appreciates and understands how different and creative he is and is patient with that. But also, hopefully helps reign him in and have a lot of patience. She's also going to have to have some motherly like characteristics to be like, okay mister, right now, we're doing this this and this.

Mike has this thing, we like to call it the space cadet. Mike can hold a pair of keys in his hand, unlock the door and within two minutes no one can find the keys. Like where did you put the keys, where could he have been in those two minutes that the keys are just gone. Vegas got this, too. It's just crazy.

There's too many things going on in the head of both Mike and Vegas that we cannot even keep tabs on all of it. But when they singularly focus on something like fishing, it is this amazing ability to concentrate and do that one thing to the utmost level. I don't have that. I must do 20 projects at once and they're probably all half-assed but it's just the way my brain works.

HPFC: What advice would you give Estella about marrying a professional athlete?

Becky Iaconelli: Oh God, don't do it. Just kidding. She is in some ways wired very much like me, she needs to be the boss. She needs to be in charge. She has such a strong personality, but at the same time she has this incredible nurturing quality to her. If she's gonna marry a professional athlete then she needs to step in, she needs to run the show. She needs to be the mom to the husband and the children, and she'll be fine. I mean, honestly, she must marry someone who has major aspirations and dreams. She would be bored sick with someone who wanted this normal humdrum life because she's so driven, you can see that in her already. She has a big personality.

HPFC: Is there a chance that Estella will follow in Mike and Vegas’ footsteps and become a professional angler?

Becky Iaconelli: No, I think she'd be bored. She's like me. She couldn't do that one thing all day long. I do think she'll be the person who runs the show, such as managing Vegas's career. I'll just hand it over to her and she'll manage him. She loves to fish but she's always the one who catches the first fish but then she's done. She's like, okay, I did it. Are we done? Can we go home now? She did it and now she's ready for the next thing. So no, she would never have the patience to be out there all day.

HPFC: Okay, what is she going to become? A fashion designer? I do love her outfits.

Becky Iaconelli: She keeps telling me that she's going to design purses. She promised to live in Paris and have a room for me so I could come visit. I'm really hopeful of that.

I was actually a fashion major in college. My obsession with clothing and fashion, came from an early age and she loves to get dressed up, with sparkles, tons of accessories and layers as a youngster as well. I can only hope that she does live in Paris, I would love that, that would be awesome.

It was hard to hang up, Becky made this interview so easy and helped us understand more about her life and why Mike continues to be so successful. I didn’t ask her what she had in store after we hung up but I am pretty sure she is packing that bag just in case Estella decides to move to Paris sooner rather than later.