PrintMaggie, Charlie and Haylie Jayne reflect on growing up in the horse business and finding their niches as young adults.
Ask any of the Jayne children how long they’ve been riding, and their answers are all the same: basically since birth. As sixth-generation horsemen, Maggie, 25, Charlie, 23, and Haylie, 21, were all exposed to the lifestyle when they came home from the hospital to the 140-acre Our Day Farm in Elgin, Ill., owned and managed by their parents, Alex and Linda.
The early acclimation obviously paid off, as all three have become top riders in different fields. Though they all placed well in major equitation finals during their junior careers, they’ve each gone in slightly divergent directions since then.
Maggie spent 2009 sweeping hunter championships at the Devon Horse Show (Pa.) and the fall indoor shows, Charlie rode on the Meyden FEI Nations Cup team and placed well in several grand prix classes, and Haylie took a varsity national championship as a member of the University of Georgia equestrian team.
After childhood, all three children decided to stay in the family business, and they now partner with Alex.
“No, there really was not an option for them not to be involved with horses,” Alex joked. “I’m lucky they all love it as much as I do at this point.”
Alex, a fifth-generation horseman, was raised around horses too. His great-grandfather owned a livery stable where patrons were charged a nickel to rent a horse for the day. His father, Frank Jayne, Sr., first had a traveling rodeo—featuring a bull that could jump over a car—and later trained race horses at Arlington Race Track.
“When my parents got married, my dad quit doing the race horses. He said it was no place to raise a family,” said Alex.
After leaving the track, Frank Jayne, Sr., bought a dairy farm, which he later converted to a barn for show horses. It’s the same farm and barn Alex owns today.
In the late 1970s, Alex and Linda were A-level Pony Clubbers together in Wayne, Ill. Though Alex had a lengthy family history in horses—he was a fifth-generation horseman who also started riding before he could walk—Linda only started riding a few years before the two met. She was 17, and he was 15 when they went on their first date.
“I didn’t know he was 15 at the time,” Linda said with a laugh. “He was 6'4"!”
The two married in 1980, and Maggie was born in 1984. During his extensive riding career, Alex dabbled in hunters, jumpers and eventing, even qualifying for the 1978 World Eventing Championships (Ky.). But shortly after Maggie was born, he mostly gave up competitive riding, instead focusing on training and selling horses.
“The kids needed more direction than I could probably give when I was riding all the time,” he said. “Something had to give somewhere. My wife and I decided our careers were over, and we needed to focus on our kids. We made the effort to put all the resources we had into their riding.”
A Passion From The Start
Though all Jayne children started riding at young ages, Maggie had the honor of starting the youngest. She was placed on a horse the first day she was alive—Alex set her on a pony’s back when the family returned from the hospital.
As a baby, she often wouldn’t fall asleep for naps so Alex would strap her into a backpack and take her on hacks. She was doing short stirrup when she was 3 and winning pony hunter championships at major shows soon after.
