John Young Brown Jr. (December 28, 1933 – November 22, 2022) was an American politician and entrepreneur from Kentucky. He served as the 55th governor of Kentucky from 1979 to 1983, and built Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) into a multimillion-dollar restaurant chain.
The son of United States Representative John Y. Brown Sr., Brown's talent for business became evident in college, where he made a substantial amount of money selling Encyclopædia Britannica sets. After briefly practicing law with his father, he purchased Kentucky Fried Chicken from founder Harland Sanders in 1964. Brown turned the company into a worldwide success and sold his interest in the company for a huge profit in 1971. He then invested in several other restaurant ventures, but none matched the success of KFC. During the 1970s, he also owned, at various times, three professional basketball teams: the American Basketball Association's Kentucky Colonels, and the National Basketball Association's Boston Celtics and Buffalo Braves (currently the Los Angeles Clippers).
Despite having previously shown little inclination toward politics, Brown surprised political observers by declaring his candidacy for governor in the 1979 election. With the state and nation facing difficult economic times, Brown promised to run the state government like a business. A strong media campaign funded by his personal fortune allowed him to win the Democratic primary and go on to defeat former Republican governor Louie B. Nunn in the general election. Because he owed few favors to established political leaders, he appointed many successful businesspeople to state posts instead of making political appointments. Following through on his campaign promise to make more diverse appointments, he named a woman and an African American to his cabinet. During his tenure, Brown exerted less influence over the legislature than previous governors and was frequently absent from the state, leaving Lieutenant Governor Martha Layne Collins as acting governor for more than one-quarter of his term. He briefly competed for the U.S. Senate after his gubernatorial term in the 1984 election but withdrew from the race after only six weeks, citing health issues. He continued to invest in business ventures, the most high profile of which was Kenny Rogers Roasters, a wood-roasted chicken restaurant he founded with country music star Kenny Rogers.
Brown married three times, the second time to former Miss America Phyllis George. Among his children are news anchor Pamela Ashley Brown and former Secretary of State of Kentucky John Young Brown III.
Brown was born on December 28, 1933, in Lexington, Kentucky. He was the only son of five children born to John Y. and Dorothy Inman Brown. His father was a member of the United States House of Representatives from Kentucky and a member of the Kentucky General Assembly for nearly three decades, including a term as Speaker of the House. John Sr. was named for, but not related to, the nineteenth century governor of the same name. A 1979 People magazine article recounts that the elder Brown's nine unsuccessful political races – for either governor or the U.S. Senate – took a toll on his family and left his mother resentful of all the money spent on campaigns.
Brown attended Lafayette High School in Lexington, where he was a seventeen-time letterman in various sports. During one summer, his father expressed disappointment that he had decided to spend the summer selling vacuum cleaners instead of working on a road construction crew with the rest of his football teammates. Motivated by his father's disapproval, Brown averaged $1,000 in monthly commissions from vacuum cleaner sales. After high school, Brown matriculated at the University of Kentucky, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1957 and a law degree in 1960. As an undergraduate, he was a member of the golf team and Phi Delta Theta fraternity. While in law school, he made as much as $25,000 a year selling Encyclopædia Britannica sets and employed a sales crew made up of classmates to increase his profits.
Brown joined his father's law practice after earning his law degree. From 1959 to 1965, he also served in the United States Army Reserve. He was legal counsel for Paul Hornung when Hornung was suspended for the 1963 National Football League season for gambling. After only a few years, Brown left his father's law firm and began a career in business.
In 1960, Brown married Eleanor Bennett Durall and had three children including John Young Brown III, Eleanor Faris, and Sandra Bennett. He got his wife involved in managing a barbecue restaurant; upon seeing its success, he became convinced of the financial potential of the fast food industry. During a 1963 political breakfast, Brown met Colonel Harland Sanders, the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), and the two discussed selling Sanders' chicken in Brown's chain of barbecue restaurants. By 1964, Brown persuaded Jack C. Massey to purchase KFC from Sanders for $2 million (equivalent to $20,761,803 in 2025). The investment group changed the restaurant's format from the diner-style restaurant envisioned by Sanders to a fast-food take out model. Giving all their restaurants a distinct red-and-white striped color pattern, the group opened over 1,500 restaurants, including locations in all 50 U.S. states and several international locations. By 1967, KFC had become the nation's sixth-largest restaurant chain by volume and first offered its stock for public purchase in 1969.
For his work with KFC, Brown was named one of the Outstanding Young Men of America by the Junior Chamber of Commerce in 1966; the following year, the Chamber named him one of the Outstanding Civic Leaders of America. Eventually, he became a member of both the Kentucky and Louisville Chambers of Commerce. The Louisville Junior Chamber of Commerce honored him as Louisville's Outstanding Young Man in 1969, and he was inducted into the University of Kentucky Alumni Association Hall of Distinguished Alumni on November 6, 1970.
In 1971, Brown sold his interest in KFC to Heublein for $284 million (equivalent to $2,257,764,996 in 2025). Using some of the profits from the KFC sale, Brown and some associates bought the Miami-based Lum's chain of restaurants from its founders, Stuart and Clifford S. Perlman, for $4 million. Of the 340-outlet beer-and-hot-dog chain, Brown said, "They did not have very good food. I figured that upgrading it would be my first task." Accordingly, he hired a group of young executives to find "the perfect hamburger". After a three-month courtship, he hired Ollie Gleichenhaus, owner of Ollie's Sandwich Shop, a small diner in Miami Beach, Florida, to train Lum's staff to prepare his "Ollie Burger" hamburgers. He later started a chain of take-out restaurants called Ollie's Trolley, named for Gleichenhaus. Initially successful, Brown said, "That venture [Ollie's Trolley] collapsed". Lions Clubs International in Tampa, Florida, honored Brown with its Service to America Award in 1974. Brown sold the Lum's chain for $9.5 million to Friedrich Jahn's Wienerwald holding group in 1978. A few years later, Brown launched John Y's Chicken, a venture which also subsequently failed. Kenny Rogers Roasters, another chain founded with country music superstar Kenny Rogers, proved more successful.
Concurrent with his post-KFC business ventures, Brown purchased an ownership stake in several professional basketball teams. He owned three professional basketball teams, one of those being the Boston Celtics. In 1970, Wendell Cherry assembled a group that included Brown to buy the American Basketball Association's (ABA) Kentucky Colonels. Following the 1972–73 season, Cherry sold his interest in the Colonels to a group from Cincinnati; Brown immediately purchased Cherry's interest from the group, reportedly to keep the team from moving to Cincinnati. He put his wife and a 10-woman board of directors in charge of the team. Colonels general manager Mike Storen felt that this was a sign that Brown was going to run the team "his way" and left the team as a result; two months later, he accepted the job of ABA league commissioner. Head coach Joe Mullaney followed soon after, saying that Brown was going to be too meddlesome in personnel decisions. Babe McCarthy lasted only one season as Mullaney's replacement; in 1975, Brown hired Hubie Brown (no relation) as head coach. The team won the ABA championship the following year.