Nancy Martiny didn’t know what she was doing when she made her first saddle.
It took her almost a year of stolen afternoons — between ranching, rodeoing and raising three children in rural Idaho — to complete it.
But because she did it under the guidance of a renowned saddlemaker, Dale Harwood, that first saddle turned out well. And because she was a real-life cowgirl who rode in that saddle while producing rodeos and working cattle, people trusted her — even though she was a woman in a field dominated by men.
“I was out amongst my customers,” Martiny said. “And that gives a man the confidence that I know what I’m talking about.” The orders started rolling in. And for more than three decades, they haven’t stopped.
Martiny, 65, wears pearl-snap shirts tucked into bluejeans, and speaks deliberately, with dashes of dry humor. She lives with her rancher husband in a log cabin in May, Idaho, in a seemingly endless valley surrounded by bulky green mountains that resemble sleeping dinosaurs.
It was here, in her home workshop, that Martiny recently made her 500th saddle. The wait time for a new “Nancy saddle” is now around six years, despite the fact that she closed her order book in 2022. (Last year, she made a saddle for a customer who put his name on the list nearly two decades ago.)