Hobby Lobby began operation August 3, 1972, with three hundred square feet of retail space located in north Oklahoma City. This was a retail outgrowth of Greco Products, a miniature picture frame company founded in 1970 by Steve’s father, David Green, when he borrowed $600.00 to buy a molding chopper, set up shop in his garage at home, and started making miniature wooden picture frames. In 1972 the first retail operation was opened in a 600 square foot strip mall at NW 23rd and Robinson in Oklahoma City. Steve graduated from high school in 1981 and began working full-time as the Store Operations Supervisor. He was promoted to Executive Vice President in 2000 and named President of Hobby Lobby in December of 2004. In 2013, Green was presented with an Honorary Doctorate of Divinity Degree by Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary and in 2015, Mid-American Christian University presented him with an Honorary Doctorate of Biblical Literature. Hobby Lobby is foremost an arts & crafts store, but includes many departments such as hobbies, picture framing, jewelry making, fashion fabrics, floral, cards & party, baskets, wearable art, home accents, and holiday merchandise. Hobby Lobby employs approximately 35,000 people and operates over 800 stores in 47 states. Hobby Lobby sales for 2017 total more than $4.5 billion. Hobby Lobby is the largest privately-owned arts and crafts retailer in the world. The headquarters are located in just over 10 million square feet of manufacturing, distribution and office space in Oklahoma City. Affiliated companies include Hemispheres, a fine furnishings store and Mardel, a popular Christian office and educational supply chain found in six states. Hobby Lobby also has offices in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, China. Steve’s father, David, is the Founder and C.E.O. of Hobby Lobby and his mother, Barbara, is a Buyer for Hobby Lobby and Hemispheres. His brother, Mart Green, is the Founder of Mardel Stores and currently serves as Chief Strategy Officer for the Green family businesses. His sister, Darsee Lett, is the Vice President of Hobby Lobby Art/Creative. In 2009, the Green family purchased its first biblical artifact and has since acquired tens of thousands of items which now comprise the Green Collection, and is on loan to Museum of the Bible. Steve devotes a significant amount of his time to supporting this endeavor and its related projects, including the Museum of the Bible Scholars Initiative, education, traveling exhibits and research. The Green Collection is among the world’s newest and largest private collections of rare biblical texts and artifacts. The collection will eventually become the core of an international, non-sectarian Museum of the Bible and will be the subject of ongoing scholarly research through the Museum of the Bible Scholars Initiative which was formed in 2010. In the summer of 2011, 400 items from the collection were put on display in a traveling exhibit called Passages which began in Oklahoma City and then moved to Atlanta, Charlotte, Colorado Springs, Springfield, MO and Santa Clarita, CA. On March 1, 2012, over 100 items were put on display at the Vatican in Rome during Lent in an international traveling exhibit called Verbum Domini. This international exhibit has since gone to Cuba, returned to the Vatican in 2014 and returned to Cuba in 2016. The Book of Books exhibit was on display in Israel from 2013 thru 2014. The 430,000 square foot Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC and opened in November of 2017, three blocks from the U.S. Capitol. Green has authored three books. His first, Faith in America, was published in 2011 by Looking Glass Books and tells the history of the advertisements that Hobby Lobby places in newspapers across the United States each year to share the real meaning of Christmas, Easter and Independence Day. In his second book, The Bible in America, published in 2013, Steve presents a never seen before view of who we are as a nation and as individuals and how the Bible has guided our history and continues to shape our national and personal destiny. Both can be purchased at Hobby Lobby stores across the nation. Steve’s third book This Dangerous Book, written with his wife Jackie, released with Zondervan and can be found on Amazon and in your favorite books stores across the nation. Steve and his wife, Jackie, have been married over 30 years and reside in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. They are the proud parents of one son and five daughters. Within the past several years they have added a daughter-in-law, three sons-in-law and four beautiful grandchildren. They are actively involved at their church, as well as many other national and international Christian ministries and charities.