When asked when he had first dreamed of being a rodeo cowboy, Ty said that it was never a matter of a revelation. He had grown up with cowboys all his life. All of his
parent's friends were cowboys and everyone in his family too. The Murray cowboy lineage goes back at least four generations, perhaps more.
Ty took to riding as early as two years of age. By the age of eight he knew his ambition was to beat Larry Mahan's record of six World All Around Championships. He rode his first 1,800 pound bull at the age of nine and suffered a broken jaw. Undeterred, Ty trained as hard as he could to become the best rodeo cowboy ever. He bought himself a bucking machine at age twelve with money he had made breaking colts. Ty rode it thousands of times, padding his jeans with cardboard to keep the insides of his thighs from bleeding. In 1987 Ty won the National High School Finals Rodeo All-Around title.

His first appearance at Cheyenne was in 1989 where he rode in all of the rough stock events. Even though he didn’t win, he immediately got involved with the rodeo itself. He helped in the arena with the pickup men, controlling the loose stock
animals after each ride, and at times took an unofficial turn on the back of extra wild horses. His takeaway from his first Cheyenne Frontier Days experience was that to win at Cheyenne, you not only have to be good, you have to be lucky.

Fortune was with Ty in 1990 when he won the "All Around Cowboy" title at age
19. He won again in 1993 taking CFD's Saddle Bronc Championship. He attended
in 1994 but injuries kept him away the following three years. He returned in 1998 where he attained his goal of winning his seventh NFR All-Around title. When he retired in 2002. Ty continued his relationship with rodeo by participating as one of the founders of the Professional Bull Riding tour, a regular feature at CFD in
the first decade of this century. He has been a regular at CFD through the years and has many friends here.

When he was asked about Cheyenne Frontier Days in 2010, Ty summed up what the rodeo meant to him: "You would say Cheyenne is Lambeau Field. It's Madison Square Garden. It's Wrigley Field. It's probably the most famous, historic venue that rodeos are held in . .. So you know that when you ride there, every person that was anyone in the sport has competed there. And you just feel it. It's like you feel the ghosts when you ride there ... There's just so much history there. When you know all the cool history that has been played out in that dirt, to have played a small part in that is pretty cool.”