Richard Lee Roberts (born November 12, 1948, in Tulsa, Oklahoma) is an American televangelist, faith healer, and the youngest son of Pentecostal pioneer Oral Roberts.
He serves as chairman and CEO of the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association, now operating as Richard Roberts Ministries, and previously spent fifteen years as president of Oral Roberts University.
Roberts is best known for decades of televised healing crusades and for hosting The Place for Miracles alongside his wife, Lindsay.
If you landed here looking for the Nobel Prize winner, that’s a different Richard Roberts entirely. Sir Richard J. Roberts is a British biochemist who won the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering RNA splicing.
The two men share a name and nothing else. This article covers the Tulsa-based evangelist and son of Oral Roberts.
At a Glance
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Full name | Richard Lee Roberts |
| Born | November 12, 1948, Tulsa, Oklahoma |
| Age | 77 (as of 2026) |
| Nationality | American |
| Parents | Oral Roberts (father), Evelyn Lutman Roberts (mother) |
| First spouse | Patti Holcombe (m. 1968, div. 1979) |
| Current spouse | Lindsay Salem Roberts (m. 1980) |
| Children | Christi and Juli (with Patti); Richard Oral (deceased in infancy), Jordan, Olivia, and Chloe (with Lindsay) |
| Education | B.A. in Communication Arts, M.A. in Theology, D.Min., Oral Roberts University |
| Title | Chairman and CEO |
| Ministry | Richard Roberts Ministries (formerly Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association) |
| Former role | President, Oral Roberts University (1993-2007) |
| TV program | The Place for Miracles |
| Denomination | Charismatic / Pentecostal |
| Website | richardroberts.org |
[IMAGE: Richard Roberts preaching at a healing crusade]
Early Life and Background
Richard Roberts grew up as the youngest son of evangelist Oral Roberts and schoolteacher Evelyn Lutman Roberts, the third of four children.
His father was already a household name in Pentecostal circles by the time Richard was born, having launched his healing ministry the year before in Enid, Oklahoma.
Growing up meant long stretches without his parents, who sometimes traveled for six weeks at a time holding healing crusades.
At age 5, Richard sang “I Believe” standing on a chair at one of his father’s crusades in Baltimore. That early stage time foreshadowed a career that would blend music, television, and ministry for the rest of his life.
Being Oral Roberts’ son wasn’t always easy. Richard has written about coming home from school with a bloody nose more than once, after getting into fights with kids who mocked his father’s ministry.
His two older siblings did not live easy lives either. His sister Rebecca died with her husband in a plane crash in 1977, and his brother Ronald died in 1982.
Richard’s younger sister, Roberta Potts, became an attorney in Tulsa and largely stayed out of the public ministry spotlight.
Education and a Voice From Nowhere
Richard initially refused to attend Oral Roberts University, enrolling instead at the University of Kansas in 1966.
According to his own account, that changed one day in his dorm room, when he heard a voice tell him three times that he was in the wrong place. He transferred to ORU that fall.
He went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in Communication Arts in 1985, a master’s from the ORU School of Theology and Missions in 1992, and a Doctor of Ministry degree in 2002, all from the university he would later lead.
Ministry and Career
Roberts joined his father’s ministry at 19, working in radio, television, and music. He toured internationally as a singer, helped build the World Action Singers, and became the face of his father’s prime-time TV specials, including the variety show Contact.
From 1973 to 1975, he also traveled and sang in healing meetings with Kathryn Kuhlman, one of the most prominent healing evangelists of that era.
In 1985, Oral Roberts stepped back and Richard was elected president of the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association.
The next year, he helped found International Charismatic Bible Ministries alongside his father, an organization built to support independent charismatic churches and grow student recruitment for ORU.
President of Oral Roberts University
Richard became executive vice president of ORU in 1987, overseeing university administration and chapel services while still juggling his own crusades and television work. When Oral Roberts formally resigned as university president in 1992, the board elected Richard as the school’s second president on January 27, 1993.
His presidency had real results early on. Roberts and his team grew enrollment by 1,200 students and cut the university’s debt in half over four years, using his television platform to promote the school and launching an “Adopt A Student” scholarship campaign.
Rise to Prominence
Roberts launched Richard Roberts Live in 1984, a daily program blending music, ministry, and celebrity guests. He’s held healing crusades across 39 nations on six continents, at times preaching to crowds exceeding 200,000 people in a single service.
In 1982, he led his first international crusade in South Africa, a sign of the global direction his ministry would take in the decades that followed.
His television presence only grew from there. In 1997, Richard and Lindsay launched The Place for Miracles, an interactive daily broadcast built around prayer requests and viewer testimonies.
The show has logged well over 150,000 calls reporting healings and answered prayers since it began.
Personal Life
First Marriage to Patti Holcombe
Roberts met Patti Holcombe at Oral Roberts University and married her on November 27, 1968, against the wishes of family and friends who had concerns about the match.
In his book He’s the God of a Second Chance, Roberts later described the marriage candidly, writing that he came to see it as a serious mistake he didn’t know how to escape, but that his opposition to divorce kept him trying to make it work. The couple had two daughters, Christi (born 1971) and Juli (born 1972).
Patti filed for divorce in 1978, and the marriage officially ended in 1979. The split made headlines in roughly 300 newspapers nationwide, a brutal level of exposure for a young couple inside one of the country’s most visible ministry families.
Patti later remarried composer John Thompson and published a memoir, Ashes to Gold, in 1983, describing her decade in the marriage and her perspective on life inside the Roberts ministry.
She’s been candid that the pressure of trying to live up to the Roberts name took a toll on their relationship, though no single cause has ever been definitively pinned down as “the” reason in either party’s public statements.
Marriage to Lindsay Roberts
Following his divorce, Roberts went before the ministry’s executive staff to discuss remarrying and received their approval. On January 11, 1980, he married Linda “Lindsay” Salem, then a 23-year-old ORU law student, at the campus chapel of Rollins College in Florida.
The couple’s early years together were marked by loss. Lindsay suffered several miscarriages before giving birth to a son, Richard Oral Roberts, on January 17, 1984.
The infant developed a lung complication and died just 36 hours after birth, a loss that both Richard and Oral Roberts have written about as one of the most painful chapters in the family’s history.
Richard and Lindsay went on to have three daughters: Jordan (1985), Olivia (1987), and Chloe (1989). Jordan later became Director of Hunger Needs a Voice, a humanitarian outreach of the ministry focused on feeding children in crisis zones.
The 2007 ORU Resignation
This is the part of Roberts’ story that draws the most ongoing search interest, and it deserves a direct, fair explanation. In late 2007, three former ORU professors filed a lawsuit alleging that Richard and Lindsay had misused university resources for personal and political purposes, including allegations involving campaign activity and expensed communications. The university’s tenured faculty passed a near-unanimous, nonbinding vote of no confidence in his leadership.
Roberts has described the decision to resign as one he reached through prayer rather than legal pressure alone. He’s said he didn’t want the ongoing lawsuit and media coverage to keep damaging the university, its students, or its donor base.
He tendered his resignation on November 23, 2007, effective immediately, writing in a public statement that he loved ORU and wanted to see the best for its students, faculty, and staff.
The lawsuit was later dismissed, and ORU stated it had not improperly destroyed any records related to the case. In January 2008, the ORU Board of Regents voted unanimously to name Roberts president emeritus, recognizing his 15 years leading the university.
He stayed connected to ORU as a “spiritual regent” while returning full time to the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association and his healing ministry, which he’s described as his first love all along.
Theology and Ministry Philosophy
Roberts’ ministry centers on divine healing, a theological focus inherited directly from his father’s tent-revival roots. His teaching leans on the idea that physical, emotional, and financial breakthroughs are available through faith, prayer, and what the family has long called “seed-faith” giving, the practice of giving to ministry as an act of faith expecting God’s provision in return.
His current Greater Works International pastors’ conferences focus on training church leaders in developing regions to bring healing-centered ministry into their own communities, an approach that mirrors his father’s original vision of raising up ministers who would go where established Christian resources were thin.
Influence and Legacy
Roberts carried his father’s media-driven ministry model into a new television era, helping keep a Pentecostal healing emphasis visible on American TV through the 1980s, 90s, and beyond. His stewardship of Oral Roberts University, despite its rocky ending, did produce real enrollment growth and debt reduction during a period when the school’s finances were genuinely fragile.
Today, Richard Roberts Ministries continues distributing teaching resources translated into roughly a dozen languages, aimed at pastors in regions with limited access to Christian materials or reliable internet. The ministry’s Healing Network, launched in 2023, extended that same healing-focused content into a 24-hour streaming format.
Criticism and Controversies
Beyond the 2007 ORU resignation, Roberts’ family ministry faced earlier scrutiny tied to the City of Faith Medical Center, a massive medical complex his father built in Tulsa.
In 1988, Oral and Richard Roberts were named in a $15 million lawsuit filed by patients who alleged the two men claimed to heal or visit patients they had not actually treated.
The City of Faith closed in 1989 after years of financial losses, a costly chapter that strained the broader ministry’s finances and credibility heading into the 1990s.
Roberts’ high-profile divorce from Patti in the late 1970s also drew criticism from some corners of the Christian public at the time, given the prominence of his family’s ministry and the broader cultural unease around divorce within conservative Pentecostal circles. He’s addressed that period directly in his own writing rather than avoiding it.
Net Worth and Financial Information
No verified, audited figure for Richard Roberts’ personal net worth is publicly available. Several low-quality celebrity finance websites list speculative numbers without citing credible sources, and this article won’t repeat figures that can’t be traced back to anything solid.
What is documented is that Richard Roberts Ministries operates as a nonprofit religious organization, and Roberts has continued drawing income from his role as chairman and CEO of that ministry for decades.
Interesting Facts
- Roberts sent a golf ball through his family’s living room window the first time his father tried to teach him to swing a club.
- He sang in healing meetings alongside Kathryn Kuhlman from 1973 to 1975, years before taking over his father’s ministry.
- He attended a prestigious performing arts camp at Interlochen and once landed the lead role in a camp production of Annie Get Your Gun.
- He initially enrolled at the University of Kansas specifically to avoid attending his father’s university.
- His ministry’s “Adopt A Student” campaign helped grow ORU enrollment by 1,200 students during his presidency.
- The Place for Miracles has logged well over 150,000 viewer calls reporting healing testimonies since it launched in 1997.
Timeline
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1948 | Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma |
| 1967 | Transfers from University of Kansas to Oral Roberts University |
| 1968 | Marries Patti Holcombe; joins his father’s ministry full time |
| 1973-1975 | Tours and sings with Kathryn Kuhlman |
| 1978-1979 | Patti files for divorce; marriage ends |
| 1980 | Marries Lindsay Salem |
| 1984 | Son Richard Oral Roberts dies 36 hours after birth |
| 1985 | Elected president of the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association |
| 1993 | Elected second president of Oral Roberts University |
| 1997 | Launches The Place for Miracles with Lindsay |
| 2007 | Resigns as ORU president amid a financial mismanagement lawsuit |
| 2008 | Named president emeritus of ORU |
| 2010 | Founds the Richard Roberts School of the Spirit (now School of Miracles) |
| 2023 | Launches The Healing Network, a 24-hour streaming platform |
Frequently Asked Questions
What does Richard Roberts do now?
He serves as chairman and CEO of Richard Roberts Ministries, hosts The Place for Miracles with his wife Lindsay, and leads Greater Works International pastors’ conferences training church leaders abroad.
What happened between Patti and Richard Roberts?
Patti Holcombe Roberts filed for divorce in 1978 after a decade of marriage, and the divorce was finalized in 1979. Richard has described the marriage as one he struggled with for years before it ended, and Patti later wrote about her own experience in a 1983 memoir. No single publicly confirmed cause has been attributed to the split by either party.
What happened to Richard Roberts’ first wife?
After her divorce from Richard, Patti remarried composer John Thompson and became known as Patti Roberts Thompson.
She wrote about her marriage and divorce in the book Ashes to Gold and later wrote about rebuilding her life and faith after a difficult start to her second marriage.
What did Richard Roberts discover?
If this question is about a scientific discovery, that refers to a different person entirely: Sir Richard J. Roberts, the British biochemist who won the 1993 Nobel Prize for discovering RNA splicing. The evangelist Richard Roberts covered in this article has no connection to that discovery.
Is there a “Sir Richard Roberts”?
Yes, but he’s not this Richard Roberts. Sir Richard J. Roberts is a Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist, unrelated to the Oral Roberts family or their ministry.
What is Richard Roberts’ net worth?
There’s no verified public figure. Richard Roberts Ministries operates as a nonprofit, and most “net worth” numbers found online trace back to unverified celebrity finance sites rather than audited or primary sources.
Does Richard Roberts have children?
Yes. He has two daughters, Christi and Juli, from his first marriage to Patti, and three living children, Jordan, Olivia, and Chloe, from his marriage to Lindsay. A son, Richard Oral, died in infancy in 1984.
How can I reach Richard Roberts Ministries?
Richard Roberts Ministries can be contacted through richardroberts.org, which includes information on prayer requests, The Place for Miracles broadcast, and the Abundant Life Prayer Group phone line.
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