Jay Snider was born and raised in southwest Oklahoma and calls Cyril, Oklahoma home. Born to a ranching and rodeo family, his dad was a top roper and rodeo cowboy and his granddad a brand inspector for the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. He rodeoed throughout most of his early years and now stays busy raising ranch horses, cattle, and team roping. Jay continues to judge a few amateur rodeos around home and hosts the annual Invitational Rafter S Ranch Cowboy Reunion.

Jay is a six-time nominee for male poet of the year by the Academy of Western Artists. His album Cowboyin’, Horses and Friends was nominated for best poetry album for 2001. In July of the same year, Jay was honored to have been chosen by CowboyPoetry.com to be the fifth Lariat Lauriete winner for his poem, My Old Amigo Lum. Jay released his second cowboy poetry CD, Of Horses and Men, for which he received Album of the Year from the Academy of Western Artists in 2006.

Jay has appeared on Country Music Television’s Christmas in Cowboy Country hosted by Clint Black. He was a Silver Buckle winner at Kanab, Utah’s Cowboy Poetry Rodeo in 2004 and was a feature cowboy poet at the Ozarks Fall Roundup Cowboy Gathering hosted by Shepherd of the Hills Outdoor Theater in Branson, Missouri. Jay also was a feature cowboy poet in 2005 at the Kamloops Cowboy Festival in Kamloops, British Columbia and at Cal Farley's Youth Poetry Gathering near Amarillo, Texas. He was awarded the "Best of the Best" trophy at Kanab, Utah's Cowboy Poetry Rodeo and performs regularly at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada.