Difference between revisions of "Gail Miller"

Latest revision as of 16:34, 29 August 2021

Gail Miller and her husband Larry H. Miller turned their Toyota dealership into a $4.4 billion company with over sixty dealerships (2016 sales). Her husband died in 2009 and she became the sole owner of the Larry H. Miller Group of Companies, which includes the car dealerships, the Salt Lake Bees (MBL triple-A team), the Zone sports radio network, the Larry H. Miller Megaplex Theatres chain, restaurants, and other businesses. She serves as chairman of the board. On October 28, 2020, Miller announced that the LHM Group sold a majority stake of the NBA team the Utah Jazz to Qualtrics CEO Ryan Smith. The deal includes the Vivint Arena (home of the Jazz), Salt Lake City Stars (NBA G League team), and management of the Salt Lake Bees. The Miller family bought 50 percent of the team in 1985 and the rest of the team in 1986.[1]

In 2012 she was named Time magazine’s Dealer of the Year. Forbes estimates her wealth at $1.9 billion and ranked her number 12 on their list of America’s Richest Self-Made Women, published earlier in October 2020. They also ranked her as Utah's sole billionaire.[2]

She is also the chairwoman of the Salt Lake Community College. She and Miller had five children, including Greg, who serves as the corporation’s CEO.

Gail and the late Larry Miller donated to many educational, charitable, and humanitarian causes, which she continues.

In 2018 she published Courage to Be You: Inspiring Lessons from an Unexpected Journey. In her book she wrote that she wished her husband Larry had worked less. In an interview with the Deseret News, she spoke about that part of her life:

DN: You write that you wished Larry had worked less and been more engaged with your family, but you have all of these resources and this success because Larry worked so hard. Do you think that you would have the resources that you have to help people if he hadn’t worked so hard?

GM: Probably not, but I think it’s a matter of where you put your value. The success and the money and the worldly things that we have are not where I count my wealth. My wealth is counted in relationships, being able to provide jobs for people where they can support their family and live good lives. Those are the things that really drove us, and especially Larry, because he was in the trenches every day doing it. And that was what he did it for, not to earn a lot of money, because I would say to him every time he’d buy a new dealership, “Why do you want another one? We’ve got enough. Why do you want another one?” Because I knew it was just taking him away. And he said, “Because I can do so much good with it. I can provide jobs for people and I can do things that make the world a better place.”

But when you do something so intensely as Larry did in running the company, something else suffers, and that was our family, and I don’t say that with any malice because he knew it. He agreed to it. He said it in his later years, “If I had it to do again, I would not have worked so hard. I would have spent more time with my family.” So he realized that he gave up something to build all of this. And you know, I’m glad we have it. I’m glad we’re able to do what we can do and make some commitments that make the world, make our community, better. But I also wish he had been able to know his kids better and to have had more time with them, to have given them the effort that he put into the people that he trained in the company.

DN: So would you say that it was not worth that sacrifice?

GM: No, I think it was worth that, and I didn’t realize that until much later when I realized that he did have an influence on them. He had an influence on the way they learned to work, in the loyalties that they have, in their value system, in the way they conduct themselves. Those are all really important things and he had that influence on them. And they’re very dedicated to what they do. They are good fathers, good family men, they’re good employees, they’re good community leaders, but they didn’t have that father-son relationship, and they can’t go back and get it. They did have a relationship with him later on when they worked with him, but it doesn’t replace the joy that you have as a father-son playing ball together or doing schoolwork together, and those are the kinds of things that they missed out, and he missed out on. … But I’m glad they had that much.[3]

In 2012 she married longtime family friend Kim Wilson. She is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.