VIP Profile: Amy & Dave Chandler
Story By: Allison Razic
Dave Chandler likes to say he came to Bowling Green “for one semester” in 1977 to figure out how to pay for the next. One semester became a life. After earning a geology degree at WKU and two years in the field, he took a flyer on real estate, worked a decade at local brokerages, then launched Chandler Real Estate and bought his first property in 1986. Amy (formerly Amy Hale Milliken) is Bowling Green born and raised. She sped through WKU in three years, graduated from law school, and walked straight into public service. In 2004 she was appointed, then elected, as the first woman to serve as Warren County Attorney, a post she continues to hold.
They knew of each other for years, but the real connection started with one of Dave’s “curiosity lunches,” his practice of inviting someone interesting to a monthly meal for a year. They’ve now been married two years, with a life orchestrated around three daughters—Abby, Chloe and Ruth E—and now a grandson as well.They now have a calendar that often bends to the cheer schedule. “Family first,” Dave says. “If it’s not on the calendar, it isn’t real.”
Work still animates Dave, but he’s honest that his passions have widened. “Real estate built our platform. Golf keeps me sane. Service gives it meaning.” Amy's passion is service in both her job and nonprofit work. “My job is where the law meets people’s everyday lives. Victims, families, kids. You can’t phone that in.”
The couple’s giving has a consistent thesis: expand access and widen ladders. On the Hill, Dave’s lead gift helped create Chandler Memorial Chapel, a quiet, interfaith place for reflection that he hoped would offer “a place of solitude” to WKU’s students, faculty, and staff. This past year, a $7.5 million leadership gift from the Chandlers helped deliver a new home for the Gordon Ford College of Business—now Amy and David Chandler Hall. “Western Kentucky University holds a special place of pride in our hearts,” Dave said when the naming was announced, adding that the gift reflects their belief in education’s power to transform lives.
Off campus, their philanthropy shows up where stability is built early. The Foundry Christian Community Center’s preschool initiative is one they often highlight, and the couple’s support has been public and sustained, including a major gift toward the preschool’s launch. “If you change the first five years, you change a neighborhood,” Dave says. United Way, Junior Achievement, local arts organizations, and neighborhood efforts have also benefited. “We try to back people doing the daily, unglamorous work,” Amy says.
Ask what they’re most proud of and each points to the other. “Amy is my best decision,” Dave says without blinking. “She sees the person in front of her, not the problem.” Amy returns the serve: “Dave’s story—from a single-parent household to building companies and then giving those resources back—is why I fell in love with him. He’s never forgotten where he started.” Dave credits a village of “coaches, preachers and my mother” for keeping him aimed in the right direction, and he talks often about two maxims: “In America, there is a price to pay for poverty and for success. You choose which one to pay,” and “It’s not how much money you have, it’s what you do with it.” The book that rewired his thinking early on was Think and Grow Rich, which he still hands to young entrepreneurs.
Amy’s influences begin at home. “My dad told me I could do anything—and that included things people assumed a woman couldn’t do,” she says. “He expected excellence, not excuses.” Professionally, she cites mentors like Justice Charles Reynolds and Judge Basil Griffin for modeling fairness and backbone. In office, she has pushed on practical access—public-facing tools, collaboration with schools and law enforcement, and programs that keep families stable. Amy's work has gone well beyond Warren County, she drafted the Ordinance which established the Right to Work law in Warren County, marking our community as the first county in the United States to pass anything like it, which created a domino effect of other county's passing the same law. She’s also proud of the work that happens far from a podium: “When a victim feels heard, or a family gets to a better place, that’s success.”
As for the road ahead, they talk more about direction than destinations. “We want to keep building a legacy we’re proud of,” Dave says, citing continued focus on early-childhood education, WKU and projects that make living in our community tangibly better. “Preschool, housing, talent—those levers matter.” Amy nods: “The goal is simple. Leave it better than we found it.” Their shared hope is that their proudest achievement is still in front of them.