The Untold Truth Of Rob Dyrdek

It may seem like it's all fun and games for professional skateboarder-turned-TV personality Rob Dyrdek as he zip-lines across his office, swims with sharks, or breaks world records for the craziest things — but there's some behind-the-scenes hustle going on for this businessman 24/7. "Most of the time, I'm so serious with the stuff I do in my normal life," he admitted to The New York Times in 2011. "It's almost like the television stuff is an outlet to be crazy."

Everyone everywhere knows Dyrdek as the reality star of three super successful shows on MTV: Rob & Big, Fantasy Factory, and Ridiculousness. But there's more to this guy than just viral videos and dangerous stunts. "It allows me another creative outlet besides my true passion," he added to the publication, "which is business, and second to that is skateboarding."

Dyrdek's career has taken many twists and turns ... on more than just a skateboard. From acting to entrepreneurship and practically everything in between, there are lots of things viewers probably don't know about this daring dude. Let's grab our boards and alley oop into the untold truth of Rob Dyrdek.

Four years before wedding bells were ringing for Rob Dyrdek and his missus, Bryiana Noelle Flores, in 2015, the MTV star's sister, Denise, was the first to get hitched. It was a special moment for his sis, of course, but it was an equally special moment for Dyrdek himself, because he decided to become ordained for the nuptials, which were featured in an episode of Fantasy Factory.

"This is truly an amazing experience and opportunity to be able to join these two together forever," Dyrdek announced at the altar. "This is intense." The star took his role very seriously, preparing for months prior and even offering up his own office, the Fantasy Factory, as the couple's wedding venue. His right-hand man, the late Christopher "Big Black" Boykin, took over the music, conducting a choir with harmonious music as the newly wedded pairing took their first trip together down the aisle.

However, Dyrdek had to make sure that his sister's new mister was serious about his new role, as well. He previously declared, "This is a man that's meant to be in my family!" but before signing off on their marriage license, Dyrdek pulled out a silver platter and asked him, "What says committed like chewing down a couple fried scorpions?" Surprisingly, Denise's husband did just that. Now that's true love.

While Rob Dyrdek has taken over our television screens doing daring stunts, he was first performing tricks as a professional skateboarder while he was still only a teenager. During his skateboarding career, the star set an impressive 21 world records (via Yahoo! Finance), and still holds 16 to this day, including most skateboard nollie kickflips in one minute and highest skateboard ramp jump into water.

"It's been an honor to do it over the years," Dyrdek told Guinness World Records in 2014. Though most of these records have been made with a skateboard in hand, the adventurous star has done some pretty crazy things that fans could see throughout seven seasons of his reality show, Fantasy Factory. For the finale that same year, he rode something a little bigger than a skateboard to create the record for the farthest reverse ramp jump by car, telling reporters at the scene, "That's the last scary thing I ever want to do in my life!"

However, it wasn't the last. Though the dangerous stunt was supposed to be for the actual series finale, MTV wanted more seasons from Dyrdek's successful show. "[We] did a whole show, a singing speech to say goodbye, [an] hour-long special," Dyrdek divulged on In Depth with Graham Bensinger, adding that he was hesitant to sign on for a seventh season. Fortunately for fans everywhere, another "final final finale" aired a year later.

Rob Dyrdek clearly lives an exciting life. "I get to do insane things," he told The New York Times in 2011, before listing off some examples: "I got attacked by a tiger. I got attacked by a shark. I got to jump a car 100 feet." Y'know, totally normal day job stuff. Since there's pretty much always something crazy going on in the Fantasy Factory world, it shouldn't be a surprise that Dyrdek's fans are eager to get involved. Some might be a little more eager than others, however, and apparently figured there must be even more fun going on at the TV star's house.  

One of Dyrdek's craziest fan encounters includes one family of strangers, who started showing up to his home every year on the 4th of July to take a photo with the reality show star. Though this may seem borderline creepy — we're talking a fandom move so extreme many of us could never even imagine doing — it thankfully doesn't seem to bother Dyrdek. "From simple stalking to a full blown tradition," he quipped to The Hollywood Reporter in 2012. At that point, this unlikely Independence Day custom was five years in the making, but no word on whether the situation has since evolved to a barbecue invite and fireworks.

Rob Dyrdek and Christopher "Big Black" Boykin appeared to be best buds on screen, so it was easy to assume these friends went way back. However, when Dyrdek had an idea for a show about himself and his security guard, he called up a local security company for recommendations. "[I] said, 'We're just looking for a really funny, big, lovable guy,'" he explained on Jon Interviews in 2018. "And he's like, 'Oh, I've got the perfect guy for you!' And, I swear, we hit it off from the first go."

The two, of course, went on to star on Rob & Big, which premiered on MTV in 2006 and lasted three seasons before Dyrdek was done. "MTV wanted another [Rob & Big] season, but I didn't want to ... be known for it," he told Liveaboutdotcom, noting that his other businesses weren't getting the attention they deserved, so he brainstormed. "I thought, what if I added a [skate park] to my business? And once it came to that I started slowly thinking about a big warehouse." The perfect balance was born: Rob & Big turned into Fantasy Factory, and luckily, "Big Black" was on board.

Sadly, two years after their hit reality series ended in 2015, Boykin unexpectedly passed away. "You still have a hard time believing it," Dyrdek later told Jon Foss. "... In my mind, he's still in Texas. I just haven't seen him for a while."

The Fantasy Factory that Rob Dyrdek turned into his office holds more than just desks and computers. There's also a foam pit, a trampoline, a giant skateboard, and sometimes even caged tigers (as you do). Because of this, it might not be so surprising that there also happens to be a landing pad for an alien spaceship built on the roof — y'know, just in case.

It all started when Dyrdek met Riley Martin, a regular guest on The Howard Stern Show who claims he's actually been abducted by aliens. Martin told Dyrdek an assortment of interesting things about himself. "Not only has he seen me on the mothership, but if he told me who I really was, I'd be scared," Dyrdek told The Hollywood Reporter in 2012, adding that Martin claimed the MTV star has "alien DNA." Judging by his Young Hollywood interview that same year, it seems like Martin might have gotten inside the reality star's head, as Dyrdek revealed that he "truly [believed]" he was "part-alien." Well, maybe not completely, as he went on to quip, "I think about one sixteenth."

Whether or not Dyrdek's actually of extraterrestrial life, he is going to be prepared with his rooftop landing pad, jokingly saying to THR, "I'm going to have to get back to the mothership sometime."

Rob Dyrdek hates the stigma that comes with all skateboarding movies, so in 2009, he set out to make a good one. After all, there seems to be nothing this guy can't and won't do. Skateboarder, entrepreneur, reality television star, world record breaker, and now screenwriter can be added to Dyrdek's vast list of achievements.

Dyrdek spent months developing the idea for a full-length skateboarding film called Street Dreams, but after pitching the script he co-wrote with friends to multiple agents, sadly, nobody wanted to make it. They simply didn't like how it would have a hard R rating. "It's a beautiful movie outside of all the cursing," Dyrdek explained on In Depth with Graham Bensinger in 2016. However, he's never let anything stop him before — not even being attacked by a tiger or shark — so he set out to make it himself. Working with a producer friend, he hired a crew, actors (and even had a role in it himself), set up a nationwide meet-and-greet tour, and paid to have it shown in over 30 theaters. "750,000 budget," Dyrdek said. "I ended up spending 1.8 million of my own money." Wow.

Almost seven years later, Dyrdek finally saw a return in his investment from iTunes sales. "It was like 17 dollars," he admitted. It's still something, nonetheless, as he added, "I'm like, 'What?! ... This is major!'"

Realizing how popular viral videos are, Rob Dyrdek sold Ridiculousness to MTV at the same time he pitched Fantasy Factory. "I took America's Funniest Home Videos, stripped out all the stuff I didn't think was funny and was left with the coolest, funniest videos," he admitted to Foundr. However, the series didn't air until 2011 — two years after Comedy Central's Tosh.0 premiered — and comedian-host Daniel Tosh publicly accused the skateboarder of stealing the premise on social media.

"From his perspective, which I get, it's like I took his show and copied it," Dyrdek explained on Larry King Now in 2014. "... I didn't." However, he admittedly made the "uncanny mistake" of exacerbating the situation on Twitter, writing in a since-deleted post, "We are going to have to settle this the old fashioned way." In response, Tosh quipped, "Fair enough but if you have to beat me up, can we film it and put it on my show so people will actually watch it?" Shots fired ... but neither appeared to be serious. Still, as Dyrdek told Larry King, "Then it turned into this whole thing about this beef between us."

And that seemed to be the end of it. But what makes Dyrdek's show stand apart, according to the man himself, is that it's not scripted. "It's more like the way you and your friends would watch it," he explained to HuffPost. "And I'm just commenting on everything as it happens." Touché.

There's no doubt that tuning into any episode of Fantasy Factory will make you want to live each day like it's your last after watching all the crazy things that Rob Dyrdek does onscreen. If living out each day to its fullest is your M.O., you can officially live out every February 1st as Rob Dyrdek Day, too.

In 2012, the mayor of Los Angeles dedicated an entire day to Dyrdek because of his dedication over the years to keeping kids off the streets and in skate parks that he's built across the city. "There's not enough simple kindness in the world," Dyrdek said during an episode of Fantasy Factory as he accepted the honor at city hall. "For Rob Dyrdek Day forever, I want it to be more than just about skateboarding, but I want you to ask yourself at the end of each day of Rob Dyrdek Day, one question: D.Y.R.D.E.K.?" The crowd of councilmen were equally confused during his otherwise inspirational speech, so he explained, "Did You Really Do Everything Kind?"

Though Dyrdek keeps busy with his many business ventures, he's always made time to give back to kids around the local Los Angeles area, previously explaining to HuffPost, "With success comes responsibility of playing your part."

While older fans can watch Rob Dyrdek on one of his many shows on MTV, kids can catch him in cartoon form on Nickelodeon. For two seasons, he had a Nicktoon on the children's network called Rob Dyrdek's Wild Grinders, named after his own childhood skateboarding crew in Ohio (via Artsprojekt). The media mogul lent his voice to Lil Rob and starred alongside some of his Fantasy Factory friends, like Chanel West Coast and Sterling "Steelo" Brim. Dyrdek's cartoon counterpart even became an action figure. No big deal.

Since then, Dyrdek has produced two more shows on Nick: Jagger Eaton's Mega Life documented a year in the life of a teen skater, and the on-going viral video show, Crashletes, has a very similar feel to Ridiculousness. However, it's a bit more age appropriate. "It's fun and light. Nothing will ever be mean spirited," Dyrdek told LA411. "It's more about sitting down, getting lost and laughing whether you're ten years old or fifty years old." It makes sense considering the younger generations grew up on Internet videos.

When Rob Dyrdek was a teenager, he was more interested in hitting the skate park than the books. "I was so focused on becoming a pro skateboarder," he told AzTeen Magazine in 2010. "I would sit in school and think about all the tricks I was going to do." So right after celebrating his sweet 16, Dyrdek picked up his skateboard and made a sweet deal with a skateboarding sponsor. "I didn't go to my senior year of high school, which was unheard of in Ohio," he later explained to Inc. Instead of living a life of gowns and tassels, he moved himself to California to pursue 'boarding and business.

Even though Dyrdek became a serious success with an estimated net worth of $50 million, he had many failures along the way. "I had a skate shop that lasted about three months," he said, adding that he even tried out the music business. However, looking back, Dyrdek told his past self, "Just because you think it's cool that you're a pro skateboarder and you got a hip hop label, you don't know what you're doing. You have no business in there."

Instead, he stuck to what he knew — skateboarding — and eventually MTV took notice of the 'boarder and businessman. "Everything I do builds upon itself," Dyrdek told AzTeen Magazine, "and is a catalyst for doing bigger and better things." And the rest, as they say, is history.

Rob Dyrdek had no plans to stick around the world of MTV once he turned 40, admitting during his In Depth with Graham Bensinger interview in 2016, "I don't want to be Kurt Loder." So when his big birthday rolled around two years prior, it was a big deal to make him stay — for both the network and for Dyrdek's wallet. 

"Honestly, it's going to have to be so much money that I'd be stupid not to do it," Dyrdek recalled telling the network, and MTV quickly came through. As much as the iconic channel has built up Dyrdek's crazy career, he's helped MTV grow, too. Though Fantasy Factory is long gone, Ridiculousness continues to run rampant on the network multiple times a day and gives MTV some pretty impressive ratings — making it a no-brainer to keep the famed skateboarder on board.

While he's continued to stay busy making millions on MTV, Dyrdek is also dedicated to boosting his various businesses. "My goal is to build and sell 50 to 100 businesses over the next few years," he revealed on Jon Interviews in 2018. His main focus isn't television, but after almost two decades with MTV, Dyrdek doesn't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. "As much as I would like to evolve into just being a pure businessman, which I enjoy so much more," he added. "I'm going to be on TV for a while."