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Photographs by Mike DeFilippo
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Image of Michael and Steven Roberts
Worshipers stand and sway, offering up arms and hallelujahs to the exuberant accompaniment of an electric guitar and keyboard. For the first half hour or so of this Sunday service, Faith Miracle Temple in Florissant rocks. The collection follows, settling the whipped-up congregation down a bit for this morning’s inspirational speaker.
Enter, to a standing ovation, Michael Victor Roberts, chairman and chief executive of the St. Louis–based Roberts Companies, more than 60 different businesses that add up to one of the country’s largest black-owned enterprises, worth half a billion dollars, give or take a few million.
Roberts—with heavy-lidded blue eyes and a feathering of white in what was an Afro when he burst on the scene as a St. Louis alderman a generation ago—ambles up to the altar. In a fine blue suit that conforms perfectly to his frame, disguising a slight thickness in the middle these days, he looks every bit the “cold-blooded capitalist” he jokingly calls himself.
Cordless mike in his right hand, he holds forth casually for nearly 45 minutes with no notes. As a public speaker he’s a natural, relaxed and engaged. Though he has given versions of this talk any number of times already and knows exactly where to pause for emphasis or a laugh, he varies the presentation each time. And, while always making it sound spontaneous, he always manages to work in certain key points:
On growing up in St. Louis, son of a father who worked as a night supervisor for the U.S. Postal Service: “We weren’t rich people. We weren’t poor people. We just never had any money.”
On his company’s Donald Trump–like penchant for slapping the family name on its buildings: “People say, ‘You have a big ego problem.’ I say, ‘You have a big envy problem.’”
On the difference between the rich and the wealthy: “Rich people scream; wealthy people whisper.”
On the difference between power and authority: “Power eludes; authority endures ... Romans had power; Jesus had authority.”
Talks such as these are CliffsNotes versions of Action Has No Season: Strategies and Secrets to Gaining Wealth and Authority, an advice book Roberts published last year. The book and the speeches are, he says, his philanthropy, his giving back, his legacy. At 57, he has reached a summit and a summing-up point in an extraordinary, ongoing career.
Actually, it’s been half of a joint career with his younger brother Steven Craig Roberts, 54, the companies’ president and chief operating officer. Together, the brothers have prospered spectacularly from a revolving portfolio of timely investments in television stations, including UPN Channel 46 in St. Louis, wireless communications, cell phone towers, aviation and, more and more over the years, real estate.
“They are hard-driven, hardcore business-men,” says one of their peers, “and they have amassed an amazing amount of money. It’s a helluva Horatio Alger story.”
Or, as Michael likes to say, not bad for a couple of inner-city kids from St. Louis. Street kids they weren’t, though. They were raised by caring parents in what he describes as a “very Ozzie and Harriet” way, taught to play sports, do well in school and earn some of their own spending money. They lived in a large, lovely ranch-style house in the Penrose neighborhood, in a cul-de-sac developed with young black families in mind—but surrounded by blue-collar Irish and Italian neighbors who, within 10 years, had flown. “We were playing with a neighborhood kid in our big back yard when I was about 6,” Steve recalls, “and his father, a big-bellied guy you might call a redneck, called the kid home, saying, ‘I don’t want you playing with those niggers.’”
Steve ran inside to ask his mom what a nigger was. “Just remember,” she told him after explaining, “that if someone doesn’t want to play with you, it’s not your fault.”
The message stuck for life.
The brothers cut grass and washed cars for extra cash as teenagers, and they scored their first big grown-up deal in 1982, when they rescued an abandoned former Sears store at Kingshighway and Martin Luther King and named it the Victor Roberts Building, for their father. A few years ago, they developed a strip shopping center set back from the street behind the former store and christened it Roberts Village. “We are looking to probably double the size of it in the next three years,” says Steven. “We’ve been in touch with a couple large national retailers who say they’re changing their urban perspective. Retailers are starting to understand how many consumer dollars the city drives out every day.”
For now, the neighborhood remains downscale. Still, the brothers insist, it’s their neighborhood, the place they grew up. Hence their deliberate decision to locate Channel 46 and their corporate headquarters here, alongside the payday-loan office, the tax-preparation service, the nail salon and the cheap eateries and clothing shops that are among their tenants.
This proves, they say, that success hasn’t spoiled them, a claim echoed by Frederic Steinbach, an advertising executive who has known Steven and Michael Roberts professionally and socially for years. “I don’t see anything different about the way they treat people now than they did 25 years ago,” he says.
But what a difference a tad over a mile of Kingshighway has made in their scale and style of life. They live now at its intersection with Lindell Boulevard, in a grand neighborhood they remember walking by wide-eyed as boys. Here, a block apart, Michael built a custom home and Steven bought a historic one. They also have two houses near condominiums they developed in the Bahamas. Steven bought 200 acres in Southern Ilinois with the intention of building there, and Michael owns recreational property near Cuba, Mo., as well as a condo in Malibu.
“Now, when we talk about doing something, it’s within the realm of possibility,” says Steven. “I don’t know that there’s anything we can’t do, frankly.”
Steven and Michael. Michael and Steven. The names are spoken in the same breath, almost as if they were identical twins. From the superficiality of distance, it’s easy to see them that way. Both have law degrees—Michael from Saint Louis University, Steven from Washington University. Both were political wunderkind, elected to the St. Louis Board of Aldermen in their twenties and eventually running for mayor (Michael in 1989, Steven in 1993). They sound enough alike that a receptionist can’t distinguish their voices on the phone, and they are said to share certain qualities of character.
Former St. Louis Mayor Vincent Schoemehl remembers them from their aldermanic days as sensible. “They weren’t get-in-the way guys,” he says. “You could approach them with a reasonable proposition and get a reasonable response.”
Smart but not condescending, confident but not overbearing—they strike the right balance again and again as I spend time with them, beginning with a joint interview in their third-floor offices in the Victor Roberts Building.
Their father works here, in his namesake building, as does their baby sister, Lori, who is vice president for development. The youngest Roberts brother, Mark, 47, left a few years ago to forge his own destiny in Colorado.
The building has three entrances, each with a conspicuous sign on the doors announcing that concealed weapons are not allowed inside. In the Roberts’ reception area, a TV is tuned to Channel 46, and the walls are crowded with plaques, diplomas, citations, news articles and photographs with various dignitaries, including Jimmy Carter and Charles, Prince of Wales.
Michael receives me in his office, which is filled with African art, but we are interrupted almost immediately by his cell phone, which he takes into the hall to talk. As I page through magazines about luxury cars, I overhear words such as “million” and “dollars.”
Steven tells me later that his brother has been fascinated by cars since he acquired a “fixer-upper” Triumph TR3 as a college sophomore and that the half dozen or so he owns now include an Aston Martin, a Mercedes-Benz coupe and a Rolls-Royce. Each brother drives a Ford Expedition as his everyday car.
Michael returns from his call and takes the sofa, leaning back, hands free. Steven—cherubic, hairline receding—arrives, a sheaf of papers in his hand, and sits erect in a chair. Their separate postures hint at a crucial difference between them, one that becomes even clearer as Steven multitasks, now studying his papers, now looking up over his reading glasses to join a conversation that his brother is doing his best to steer.
Whereas Steven seems merely outgoing, Michael comes on as a thorough extrovert. They’re less mirror images of each other than subtly complementary personalities, as no one knows better than their father, Victor, their company’s chief financial officer. “Michael’s the visionary,” Victor says. “He goes out and initiates things. Steven pulls everything together. He’s the glue.”
Michael the big-picture guy, Steven the detail man—the brothers say they’ve been playing these roles since childhood. “Steve as a child was a very inquiring person, very intelligent, the one my parents expected to get things done,” says Michael. “I would be the one to find excuses.”
Steven agrees; he refers fondly to his brother as the dreamer and deal-maker. To be with the two brothers together is to sense an extraordinarily tight bond between them. “Steve and I ...,” begins Michael. “Mike and I ...,” begins Steven. For public occasions, they’ve perfected a teasing shtick in which Steven claims to be better looking and Michael ripostes that he has more hair.
Eventually the interview, like nearly every conversation with the Roberts brothers, gets around to family. They want me and anybody else who will listen to know they are third-generation St. Louisans, grandsons of a physician on one side and an engineer on the other. They are descendants of blacks and whites, slaves and small landowners. Their families are extraordinarily tight, gathering at Steven’s house every Thanksgiving and Fourth of July and, along with several dozen family friends, at Michael’s house every Christmas to feast on duck, turkey, chitlins, ribs, chicken, salads, mashed and sweet potatoes and vegetables—much of it prepared by Michael himself. Michael is a fine cook, Steven says. Ditto for Steven, according to Michael. Both credit their mother, Delores, for teaching them.
They talk freely—except about the business up and downs they surely have weathered these many years. They say they’ve learned some lessons. Discussion closed. “Failure” is not in their vocabulary. They speak fearlessly of “risk,” a big chunk of which they’ve assumed with bold purchases these last three years of the Mayfair Hotel, the American Theatre and the former St. Louis Public Schools headquarters—now, respectively, the Roberts Mayfair Hotel, the Roberts Orpheum Theater and the Roberts Lofts on the Plaza. Coming soon to these same up-and-coming two square blocks bounded by Locust, St. Charles, Eighth and 10th streets downtown: the Roberts Tower, a 24-story residential-retail-office complex.
Big stuff for a pair who, as Steven says, “haven’t always had banks buy into our vision.” They had to dig into their own pockets for $4 million to develop Roberts Village. Not that they’re averse to debt: “My definition of a millionaire is one who can borrow a million dollars,” Michael says.
The bankers must be coming around, though: Two of them are waiting in the reception area as I leave.
The Roberts brothers allow themselves no downtime between deals. These days, it’s hotels, a whole new venture for them. Since buying two in Houston and one in Atlanta earlier this year, they’ve been prowling the country for more.
“The hospitality industry now is where broadcast TV was in the ’90s,” says Steven.
“Undervalued,” adds Michael.
Otherwise, what do they know about the industry?
“As much as we knew about TV stations and wireless,” Michael says.
In other words, not all that much.
But enough to succeed.
Racially, though to a lesser degree than economically, Michael and Steven Roberts have broken through in St. Louis. They were among the first African Americans admitted to the Missouri Athletic Club. (Although, since buying the Mayfair Hotel, they have let their MAC memberships lapse; why pay a fee to the competition?) They were also admitted to the historically racist Veiled Prophet Society, a fact that did not endear them to the black community at the time, according to a fellow African-American member.
Now that the brothers have become “filthy frickin’ rich,” some African Americans “would like to see them use their political and economic capital on behalf of the disenfranchised population on whose backs they really built their empire,” says Antonio D. French, a black activist and journalist who operates the political blog pubdefweekly.com. “Not everyone thinks they are saints. Many people think they play both sides of the fence politically and don’t take stands on much of anything. Many people would like to see them do even more with their North St. Louis property in the way of reinvestment. Many people would like to see them use their ‘Black PAC’ for something more than leverage in statewide political campaigns.”
Steven listens to the charges calmly. “We are, of course, Democrats,” he says. “We support candidates, Republican or Democrat, who we think can do the best for our community—and we do that nationwide. We hosted two fundraisers for Barack Obama before anybody in St. Louis knew about him.” He draws a deep breath. “First off, you can’t criticize someone who is the only one doing anything. We are the model. We’re the ones saying, ‘Please come and do more along with us.’ And we have been saying that for 25 years, and still no one has come. There’s a lot more we can do, but we would rather not do it by ourselves.”
Black activist Percy Green finds “a certain amount of selfishness” in the Roberts’ aloofness, and what he sees as their failure to acknowledge and help “people in the streets putting pressure on for change.” A well-known black executive bristles at this criticism: “How do we know what they are giving away? That’s their business. Sure, they used the minority angle to get started, and they found good opportunities and did a damn good job of exploiting them. That’s capitalism.”
Steven says, “We have always allowed anyone with an interest in presenting their view to the community to come on air. No other TV station in this market allows that. And look at the diversity of our tenants. We have a sickle-cell organization, we have the Nation of Islam. Some folks say, ‘Why are you associated with an inflammatory organization?’ They’re a great tenant, and the forgotten few are always brought up because of Minister Farrakhan and his organization. When people wanted to go to the Million Man March, they were organized in this building. So our response is, ‘Tell us who does more than we do.’”
The brothers part company in one way: Michael serves on the boards of no St. Louis nonprofits, whereas Steven serves on so many that, to jog his memory, he has to ask an assistant for his résumé. This in hand, he checks off, among others, the Regional Business Council, the Black Leadership Roundtable, the Muny, the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, the Missouri Historical Society, the St. Louis Sports Commission, the foundations of Children’s and BJC hospitals. He also chairs the board of MERS/Missouri Goodwill Industries and is vice chairman of the board of Logan College of Chiropractic.
The Roberts brothers and establishment St. Louis have met and shaken hands—but the relationship stops short of an embrace.
“They almost won the mayoral race,” a black civic leader points out. “They love that Roberts name, they’ve got it on everything. Wouldn’t surprise me if they ran again. They don’t strike me as people who leave things undone.”
Nor, however, do they suck up.
“We’ve always been outsiders,” Steven says, and Michael quickly amends the statement: “We’ve been trailblazers.”
The brothers have never belonged to Civic Progress, that booster organization made up of St. Louis’ top CEOs, nor to any St. Louis corporate boards or country clubs. Never been asked, they say.
Michael sent his four children through the Clayton public schools under the voluntary St. Louis city-county deseg program. Steven’s three children were also in Clayton schools until administrative turmoil prompted a switch. After research, he and his wife chose Whitfield School in Creve Coeur, not John Burroughs or MICDS. “My sense of those other schools is that there is something of a caste system there,” Steven says. “We fight those categories.”
Steven Roberts Jr. is bound for Miami University this fall; his younger brother and sister will be at Whitfield. Michael’s youngest, Meaghan, goes to Pepperdine University, where her sister Fallon is a law student and his oldest, twins Jeanne and Michael Jr., 27, received their law degrees. Michael Jr. recently left Armstrong Teasdale to join the family business.
At the church, his father holds the audience rapt.
On thinking outside the box: “For you to be thinking outside the box, you have to be in a box ... There is no box ... There’s nothing for you to think outside of.”
On time management: “Eighty-six thousand four hundred seconds are given you every day ... Live every moment to the fullest.”
On priorities: “Family first.”
As he talks, laughter and applause—and the occasional “amen” or “that’s right”—ripple through the audience. Roberts concludes with a well-honed exhortation: “Let’s change the old-boy network to the homeboy network and go out and make some money.
The congregation leaps to its feet, clapping.
