It was just a regular trip to Bass Pro Shop until Chris Nixon realized his fellow shopper was Family Fued host Steve Harvey.
MACON, Ga. — When Chris Nixon went to Bass Pro Shops in Macon Thursday morning, he was just expecting to grab some bait ahead of his son Brantley’s Bass fishing tournament.
But as he was chatting in the bait aisle with a fellow shopper, he had a moment of realization: this was not just any regular bass fisherman.
“That’s when we looked at each other and I had that ‘aha’ moment, if you will, as I said to myself — Steve Harvey?” Nixon said.
Donning a fishing hat that covered part of his face, the legendary TV personality and Family Feud host Harvey was just stocking up on bait that morning, just as Nixon was doing himself. Harvey and Nixon are both avid bass fishermen.
He said that Harvey was grabbing many of the baits he was purchasing too, so he cracked a little joke.
“I said, ‘You must be tearing them down on that bait.’ And he kind of chuckles and laughed and he just said, ‘Yeah,'” Nixon said, noting that Harvey made a quick little expressive hand gesture. “It hit me at that moment. I said, man, with that quick response, I said, ‘I know that voice. I absolutely know that voice.'”
The sighting of Steve Harvey at the Macon Bass Pro Shops was abnormal — but their conversation was anything but. It was a conversation about bass fishing that he would have with anyone, discussing the latest trends and baits and more.
“It was crazy and we sat there and we talked about bass fishing just like two normal dudes for probably four or five minutes,” Nixon said.
Despite Harvey’s larger-than-life personality, there was something simple and human about the exchange between the two bass fishermen. Nixon says he tried to keep the exchange discreet to avoid compromising Harvey’s privacy since, ultimately, he’s just a regular person despite his celebrity status.
“It was just a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Very humble guy, but it just shows the commonality when you can talk about something like bass fishing with somebody,” Nixon said. “It takes the celebrity status out of it and everything else and everybody’s on ground level.”
In a time where commonality can feel hard to find, Nixon said that the exchange in the bait aisle reflected something bigger about the bass fishing community at large.
“But to not have any politics, not to have any division or anything like that, but we could just sit there and talk about bass fishing,” Nixon said.
After snapping a quick picture after their exchange, Nixon says that they went their separate ways. But the way Harvey ended the conversation left a lasting impression on Nixon.
“Just in that five-minute interaction after I’d showed Steve a picture of my son with his latest catch, I was walking away and Steve said, ‘Hey, tell your boy good luck this weekend at the tournament,'” Nixon said. “And that was to me, that was really huge, that he was listening.”
As the Houston County Schools Angler Association takes to Lake Sinclair on Saturday, they’ll have a little bit of Steve Harvey wishing them luck.
“Hopefully we can bring home the win for Steve,” Nixon said. “That’d be really cool.”