The Untold Truth About ‘Moonshiners’ Star

Steven Ray tickle is someone with an extremely unconventional source of income. Nicknamed Tickle, Steven Ray is a popular star on the Discovery Docudrama produced by Magilla Entertainment, called “Moonshiners”. If it is not evident by the title, the show follows the lives of several people who allegedly make illegal moonshine. The show has come under a lot of fire for misleading the public regarding the legality of the brewing that takes place on the show, profiting from the dead and glamorizing a lifestyle that is based on outwitting law officials. Tickle himself is a bit of an enigma – Steven has expressed his political ambitions and prowess in the blue-collar industry, but also has several arrests under his belt, as well as a moonshining career.

Early Life and Family

Steven Ray Tickle was born on 30 November 1976, in West Carolina, the USA to Larry Craig Tickle and Lois Ileane Keller Tickle. Steven is one of four boys, his brothers being Glenn, Darrel, and Mike Tickle. Tickle was actually raised in Dry Fork, Virginia; while his mother did the best she could, Steven’s father was paralyzed and terminally ill. The eventual death of his father after his ongoing battle with illness was a contributing factor to Steven’s drug habits – cocaine and marijuana in particular.

Education

Steven Ray Tickle attended Tunstall High School in Dry Fork, and then trained to be a carpenter – it’s unknown who initially introduced him to moonshining.

Career

Blue-Collar Carpentry

In contrast to his current, rather radical job, Steven Ray Tickle has been recorded as a union carpenter. He spent two years in Washington building Clyde’s Restaurant, and is purportedly very skilled, however, it is unknown whether he still pursues this career path or has abandoned this venture.

Political Career

Tickle has quite an interesting, albeit short-lived, political career. Relying on his carpentry job to earn him some authenticity and gravitas, Tickle expressed his desire to run for president as an independent in 2012. Needless to say, this was not to be, but neither was it an end to his political ambitions.

In 2013 Tickle again took to the media to announce that he intended to run for congress. He made use of the media attention he received for this to express his feelings on current events, going so far as to state in an October 2013 interview that Obamacare was ‘crap’. He explained that he believed that all American’s should be allowed access to healthcare, but that same healthcare should be compulsory for federal officials.

Discovery Channel

Tickle can be considered quite the celebrity on the Discovery Channel platform, having appeared in at least five differing series. The first show he appeared in was “Moonshiners”, which premiered on 6 December 2011.

The show glamourizes and dramatizes the lives of various individuals in the Appalachian Mountains who make their livelihood by brewing moonshine. While Discovery Channel likes to tote this as an illegal activity, Virginia law enforcement has revealed to the public that there is nothing illegal about the activities depicted on the show. Discovery Channel has opted to ignore this revelation, and continues to dupe thousands with the allure of the thrill of illegality. The show also received a backlash when it was discovered that parts of the show that featured moonshiner Marvin ‘Popcorn’ Sutton, were actually derived from footage taken before the show even premiered. This was considered even more heinous when the public found out that Sutton had committed suicide in 2009.

Steven was a popular figure on “Moonshiners”, so much so that the producers approached him about creating a spin-off that would focus solely on him, called “Tickle”; it premiered in 2013 but only ran for 11 episodes, never returning for a second season. Since then, Tickle has continued to appear on “Moonshiners” as well as others spin-offs, such as “Moonshiners: Shiners on Shine” (2017 – 2018), “Moonshiners: Whiskey Business” (2019), and as both a judge and contestant on “Master Distiller” in 2020.

Personal life

Tickle and the Law

While Steven Ray Tickle has been able to keep much of his life from the public, some things just could not remain secret.

Tickle has a criminal record springing from two arrests – his first came after he was discovered in a convenience store parking lot, alone in his car, drinking in 2015, and was arrested for public intoxication. This didn’t lead to much drama, and he was quietly released later that day.

His second arrest garnered much more media attention and eventually led to jail time. On 1 February 2016, Tickle was arrested for possession of an illegal firearm in the form of a sawn-off shotgun; the gun was spotted in the backseat of his car at a routine traffic stop. Although he was never seen using the gun or threatening to do so, according to Virginian law, possession was enough of an offense and earned him a three-year suspended penitentiary sentence.

All would have progressed calmly if he was not arrested for violating his probation on 15 September that same year, for which violation he served five months. He ran afoul of the law yet again sometime in 2017, when he had a car accident while driving on a suspended license. This second strike during his probation saw him assigned to serve out the rest of his sentence, a further 18 months in prison.

Family

Steven Ray Tickle’s first wife remains unnamed, but he still maintains an affectionate and caring relationship with his daughter Daisy Tickle who was born in 2000. By all accounts, he is a good father who takes care of her needs to the best of his abilities.

Throughout the years, Tickle has flaunted relationships on Twitter. He spent some time with an unspecified Jaci, of whom his mother heartily approved, and later on with another woman named Jenny Jen.

After his release from prison in 2019, Tickle finally married a woman who had supposedly been pursuing his affection for six years – Carol Ann Meredith a bail bondswoman, which was quite ironic given Steven’s recent activities. Nonetheless, the two married on 19 October 2019 in a Moonshine-themed wedding and are happily married as far as the public is concerned.

Appearance

Now approaching his mid-forties, Tickle’s features show little of his life experience.

He has pale brown hair that is beginning to grey, and maintains a mustache, and his eyes are a pale blue. He is 5ft 7ins (1.72m) tall and weighs around 152lbs (70kgs). Due to his near-celebrity status, Tickle’s mugshot has not escaped the press and can easily be located. This is unfortunate for him, as he is clearly intoxicated in the images.

Net Worth and Salary

Not surprisingly, moonshining is not the most profitable of businesses, and Tickle relies heavily on his per episode pay-check from Discovery Channel. It is unknown if he still works as a carpenter, and therefore conclusions about that sector of potential income cannot be reached. Tickle has a net worth of approximately $300,000 as of mid-2020, which is a common figure among Discovery Channel stars.