Business & Science
Ebby Halliday
Arkansas-born Ebby Halliday brought Depression-era sales experience to Dallas, entered real estate in 1945 and built a North Texas brokerage that opened professional doors for generations of women.
- Roster rank
- #169
- Category
- Business & Science
- Subject type
- Person
- Profile source
- Published Texas Icons profile
Texas story
Life and career
Ebby Halliday was born Vera Lucille Koch in Arkansas in 1911. She developed her sales career in millinery and moved to Dallas in 1938, first building a reputation selling hats before a developer challenged her to sell a group of difficult North Dallas houses.
That 1945 pivot became Ebby Halliday Realtors. The company expanded across North Texas and Halliday became one of Dallas's most recognizable women entrepreneurs, coupling brokerage growth with industry service and philanthropy. Her Texas identity is a Dallas business story rather than a Texas birthplace story.
Defining work
What to know
- Ebby Halliday Realtors
- 1945 Dallas real-estate founding
- women's business leadership
- Dallas philanthropy
Timeline
Key milestones
- 1911Born in Arkansas.
- 1938Moves to Dallas for a millinery career.
- 1945Enters Dallas residential real estate and founds the company that bears her name.
- 2015Dies in Dallas at age 104.
Texas connections
Places in the story
Dallas
Home from 1938 and center of Halliday's real-estate company and philanthropy.
North Texas
Region across which the brokerage expanded.
Legacy
Why the story lasts
Halliday's business importance lies not only in brokerage scale but in making professional real estate a visible path for women in North Texas.
Her career bridges retail sales, postwar housing growth, entrepreneurship and civic philanthropy across decades of Dallas development.
Sources
Research trail
Cross-linked profiles