This Cowgirl’s Saddles Are Beautiful. The Wait Time Is Six Years.

Nancy Martiny didn’t know what she was doing when she made her first saddle.

It took her almost a year of stolen afternoons — between ranching, rodeoing and raising three children in rural Idaho — to complete it.

But because she did it under the guidance of a renowned saddlemaker, Dale Harwood, that first saddle turned out well. And because she was a real-life cowgirl who rode in that saddle while producing rodeos and working cattle, people trusted her — even though she was a woman in a field dominated by men.

“I was out amongst my customers,” Martiny said. “And that gives a man the confidence that I know what I’m talking about.” The orders started rolling in. And for more than three decades, they haven’t stopped.

Nancy Martiny, who lives in May, Idaho, is one of the few female saddlemakers in a male-dominated industry.

Martiny, 65, wears pearl-snap shirts tucked into bluejeans, and speaks deliberately, with dashes of dry humor. She lives with her rancher husband in a log cabin in May, Idaho, in a seemingly endless valley surrounded by bulky green mountains that resemble sleeping dinosaurs.

It was here, in her home workshop, that Martiny recently made her 500th saddle. The wait time for a new “Nancy saddle” is now around six years, despite the fact that she closed her order book in 2022. (Last year, she made a saddle for a customer who put his name on the list nearly two decades ago.)