Stan Weaver

Montana has been home to the Weaver family since the 1880s. The house where Stan now lives with wife Nancy is the house he grew up in, just a few feet from the original ranch house his grandfather built in the 1920s.

Stan and Nancy married in 1974, shortly after he graduated with a degree in accounting from Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. Stan took over running the ranch when his father died in 1981, and he and Nancy raised sons David and Daniel and daughter KellyAnne there. The Weavers now run about 450 mother cows and approximately 100 head of horses on the ranch.

Stan’s dad bought the ranch’s first Quarter Horse in 1971, Pretty Miss Denver by Mr Blackburn 41 by Pretty Buck. The mare became the dam of five fillies, whose own daughters regularly produce the highest-selling colts and fillies at the Weavers’ annual production sale. Staying with bloodlines that have proven to be cow horses, Stan and Nancy bought their first mare in 1980, Stormy Dun Dee.

In 1999, Stan bought Ima Bit Of Heaven, a son of Smart Little Lena out of Peppys From Heaven. Stan says Ima Bit Of Heaven “put us on the map.” The Weaver’s annual production sale draws buyers from all 50 states, seven Canadian provinces, Australia, Germany, South Africa, Mexico and Brazil.

Stan became an AQHA director in 2011, after having served on the board of directors and as president of the Montana Quarter Horse Association. He has served on AQHA’s marketing, public policy, and stud book and registration committees, and he was the first chairman of the AQHA Ranching Council. Stan was a founder–along with Jim Hunt of South Dakota–of the AQHA Ranching Heritage Breeder Young Horse Development Program. He has also been instrumental in corralling Ranching Heritage Breeders to loan horses to the Miss Rodeo America Pageant’s horsemanship contest in December in Las Vegas.

In 2015 Stan was elected to the AQHA Executive Committee and became president in March 2019, where his foci, among other priorities, were the international and ranching programs.

Stan Weaver was inducted into the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame in 2025.

Biography updated as of September 2025.