LAS VEGAS (KLAS) – He was once called “The World’s Smallest Cowboy,” but now at 64 years old, Kevin Brown has one big story to tell. At 3 feet, 10 inches tall, Brown said his height never stood in the way of his dream of getting into show business.
“I’ve had a hard life, but I’ve enjoyed all of it,” Brown said, often talking about his past not in years, but in feet. “As I got into high school, I was like 3 foot.”
At an early age, Brown learned his pituitary gland, which regulates growth, was not functioning properly. He said he is just a small person; he does not have a form of dwarfism.
“I’ve always been a positive person,” he said. “No negativity in me.”
“I reached 3-foot-8 when I joined the circus,” Brown said.
Stints in tours from the United States to Canada brought him back to Las Vegas. In the late ‘70s, he owned that “world’s smallest” title, performing around the city. Photos in local newspapers from that era show him saddled up on a horse.
“I’m no different than anybody else,” Brown said. “I don’t owe anybody. I don’t lie. I don’t steal.”
Noting his weight is 50 lbs., Brown threw in a little humor during a recent interview.
“I’m considered about the cheapest date around,” he said. “I get stared at a lot. It doesn’t bother me. When you get kids going by, they say, ‘Oh look at that.’ Some are rude. Some are really cool.”
The cool ones, he said, even stop and take a photo. Some think Brown is a child in disguise – sometimes pulling at his beard to check if it is real, he said.
“I don’t mind,” he said. “I take pictures with kids, old folks, anything.”
He bowed out from the neon lights to become a different leading man. Brown has five children, and is a grandfather to nine.
“I said, ‘OK. I can’t be a star and raise a family,’” he said. “Sometimes on Halloween when I took my kids treat-or-treating, I’d go to the door and a kid would open the door and scream. It was really cool.”
Now working different jobs and staying with his children across the West, Brown said he has no regrets.
“I was blessed all through my life,” he said. “I have no enemies.”
You cannot help but smile when he tells you stories from his past, like the time a police officer could not see him behind the wheel.
“I’m pulling into town, and this cop comes zooming up. and he said, ‘We thought it was a runaway truck! Because he didn’t even see me in it,’” Brown said.
Even small in stature, Kevin Brown has definitely been seen. Brown hopes to take his story and write a book.
