Joe Craft Bio, Age, Family, Kelly Craft’s Husband, Coal And Net Worth.
Daniel Davis
Updated on January 08, 2026
Joe Craft Biography
Joe Craft is an American businessman. He is the president and chief executive officer of Alliance Resource Partners, L.P., the third-largest coal producer in the eastern United States. He first became a lawyer, and then joined diversified coal company MAPCO as an assistant general counsel in 1980 and in 1987, he became the president of the firm. Craft was rewarded with a big stake for leading the firm’s LBO and conversion into a tax-efficient public master limited partnership in 1996; it was renamed Alliance Resource Partners three years later.
Joe Craft Age
Joe was born in 1950 in Hazard, Kentucky, United States.
Joe Craft Family | Joe Craft Parents
Born Joseph Craft III, his father, Joe Craft Jr., was a lawyer whose own father, Joseph Craft, was mayor of Hazard in the 1920s. Craft’s father was part of a law firm that represented numerous coal companies.
Joe Craft Education
Craft attended Hazard schools, where he played on the high school baseball team and was a regular at First Presbyterian Church of Hazard. He received an undergraduate degree in accounting in 1972 from the University of Kentucky before earning a J.D. degree in 1976. During his time at the University of Kentucky, Craft was a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. Craft once donated $6 million to finish the basketball practice facility at the University of Kentucky.
Joe Craft Wife | Joe Craft Ex-Wife | Joe Craft And Kelly Craft | Joe Craft And Kathy Craft | Joe Craft Children
Speaking of his personal life, Joe Craft is a married man. He married his longtime girlfriend, Kelly Knight Craft, an American diplomat. Actually, Both Joe and Kelly have been hitched previously, however they wedded each other in 2016, a year before she became Trump’s ambassador to Canada. As per Matt Bevin, the legislative head of Kentucky, Joe, and Kelly were hitched on April 29, 2016.
Kelly’s first marriage was to David Moross, the CEO of a private value firm at the time, per Canadian distribution Macleans. She had one little girl with Moross, named Mia. Kelly at that point had another little girl named Jane with her subsequent spouse, Judd Knight, the distribution reports. Judd Knight is an orthodontist. With respect to Joe Craft, he has three kids and was separated from his better half, Kathy, in 2011, as indicated by Forbes.
Political activism
In January 2012 Craft donated around $500,000 to Restore Our Future, a Super PAC supporting Mitt Romney. On July 11, 2016, Craft hosted a private fundraiser for Donald Trump at the Aviation Museum of Kentucky. Joe, through his trust JWCIII REV TRUST contributed $1,000,000 to the Trump presidential inaugural committee.
Craft’s wife currently serves as the U.S. Ambassador to Canada and was nominated as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations by President Trump on February 22, 2019.
Joe Craft Coal
Joe Craft, the CEO of one of the country’s greatest coal organizations and a noteworthy Republican bankroller, is very nearly drawing much nearer into the White House inward circle. As CEO of the Tulsa, Okla.- based coal realm Alliance Resource Partners, Joe Craft is as of now a functioning player in Washington with regards to the vitality approach.
Joe Craft Trump
Trump’s Pick For United Nations Ambassador Is Married To An Ex-Billionaire With A Coal Fortune Worth Millions
When Kelly Craft, President Trump’s nominee to replace Nikki Haley as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, sat before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Wednesday morning, she was the latest in a long line of Trump appointees to face scrutiny over her personal finances. That’s because her husband, Joseph Craft III, is the longtime CEO of publicly-traded coal giant Alliance Resource Partners—potentially putting her in an awkward position on international discussions surrounding climate change and the environment.
During Haley’s tenure, the Trump administration pulled out of the Paris Agreement, the international pact that aims to lower greenhouse gas emissions, in 2017. It voted to oppose a resolution on a global pact for the environment the next year.
Alliance noted the impact of such decisions in its 2018 annual report, filed in February. The report mentions the Paris Agreement multiple times, stating that countries’ pledges to reduce carbon dioxide emissions could “further reduce demand and prices for our coal.
” In the report’s “Risk Factors” section, Alliance also highlights the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, noting that “concerns about the environmental impacts of coal combustion, including perceived impacts on global climate issues, are resulting in increased regulation of coal combustion in many jurisdictions, unfavorable lending policies by lending institutions and divestment efforts affecting the investment community, which could significantly affect demand for our products or our securities.”
Craft pledged, in an ethics agreement submitted to the State Department last month, to not participate “personally and substantially in any particular matter that to my knowledge has a direct and predictable effect on the financial on the financial interests of these entities or subsidiaries of these entities”—without first getting a written waiver.
She also wrote that her husband has agreed not to communicate directly with the department while she serves as a UN ambassador. The ethics agreement does not outline any plans to divest from Alliance—or any of the couple’s other energy holdings.
“There’s definitely a potential conflict of interest as long as he retains his position,” says Virginia Canter, the chief ethics counsel at Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington, referring to Joseph Craft. Adding that for “climate change issues that would clearly affect U.S. obligations to carbon emissions—she shouldn’t have anything to do with it.”
Democratic senators Edward Markey (Massachusetts), Jeffrey Merkley (Oregon) and Sheldon Whitehouse (Rhode Island) submitted a letter to Craft referencing the statements about the UN in Alliance’s annual reports, asking how her financial interests would impact work on things like the Paris Climate Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate.
The senators requested responses by May 15; Craft submitted her response 15 minutes before the hearing began on Wednesday. A spokeswoman declined to answer questions Forbes sent on Tuesday, saying they would be addressed during Wednesday’s hearing. Representatives for Alliance did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Senators Markey and Merkley questioned Kelly on these potential conflicts during her hearing. Craft said that when discussions of coal come up in her work she will recuse herself. However, she said that when it comes to broader discussions of fossil fuels, she has asked for “clarity” on this as it relates to her ethics agreement.
The son of a lawyer and raised in coal country, Kelly’s husband Joseph Craft joined The Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans in 2010, with a fortune of $1.4 billion. A lawyer, he had been given a big stake in the company that would become Alliance for leading its leveraged buyout and conversion into a tax-efficient public master limited partnership in 1996.
He didn’t stay on the list for long. A massive $500 million divorce settlement in 2011 forced him to split his shareholdings with his ex-wife Kathy, though he was able to retain voting rights. Forbes revised his net worth to $625 million in 2012.
Today, Joseph Craft still serves as CEO of the Tulsa, Oklahoma, company, which touts itself as the second-largest coal producer in the eastern United States. Last year it produced some 40 tons from its mines in Kentucky, Illinois, and West Virginia and reported revenues of $2 billion.
Joseph Craft married Kelly in 2016, a year before she became Trump’s ambassador to Canada. In that role, Kelly Craft had to file financial disclosure forms, which list various holdings in Alliance worth greater than $1 million.
But a form her husband filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission on May 15 indicates that he directly owns some 19.3 million shares, worth about $330 million. Alliance Resource Partners’ stock is down some 30% since Trump’s election.
Revenues are down 13% from 2014, but four of the five Wall Street analysts who cover the company rated it a “buy” (one other gives it an “overweight” rating). A note published by a JPMorgan analyst last month highlighted the company’s “strong asset base” and “well-managed balance sheet.” Alliance sells nearly 70% of its coal to U.S. electric utilities and sells the other 30% internationally.
Joe Craft Awards
- The University of Tulsa, Collins College of Business – 2008 Outstanding Business Leader
- The 2007 City of Tulsa Oklahoma – Hall of Fame
- Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year for the Southwest Region energy, chemical, and mining category
Joe Craft Net Worth
Joe Craft’s net worth was estimated to be $1.4 billion in 2012. As per a Forbes profile of Joe Craft, his total assets were evaluated to be $1.4 billion of every 2012. Art has utilized his enormous worth to give to various preservationist government officials previously. He gave a large portion of a million dollars to Mitt Romney’s presidential crusade in 2012, per The Lexington Herald-Leader, and gave over $2 million to Trump’s battle and initiation finance in 2016.
Likewise, Craft has given to just up-and-comers; The Lexington Herald-Leader declares that Craft has really offered more to Democratic competitors at the state level of office since 2008.
