Roy Austin Graham Holds a Senior BGEA Title, Rarely Seen

Roy Austin Graham holds one of the more senior titles inside his family’s ministry organizations: Vice President of Donor Ministries at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, known as BGEA. He is Franklin Graham’s second son and a grandson of the evangelist Billy Graham. Unlike his three siblings, though, he has no staff biography on BGEA’s website, and no news outlet appears to have profiled him directly. What’s publicly documented about him fits into a handful of scattered records and one week in 2018.

The other three Graham children are public figures

Franklin Graham’s other three children each have a visible role in the family’s ministries:

• Will Graham, the eldest, preaches as an evangelist and is executive vice president of BGEA.
• Edward Graham, two years younger than Roy, is chief operating officer of Samaritan’s Purse and led its disaster response after Hurricane Helene and the 2025 earthquake in Myanmar.
• Cissie Graham Lynch, the youngest, is Samaritan’s Purse’s senior advisor and ministry spokesperson, and sits on its board.

Roy’s title, Vice President of Donor Ministries, appears on BGEA’s board of directors page alongside Franklin’s and Will’s. But his siblings show up in interviews, disaster coverage and church platforms. Roy does not.

What Roy Graham does at BGEA

Donor ministries is the BGEA department that manages relationships with the people and organizations that fund its work. The earliest fixed point for when Roy Graham entered that world is a 2020 staff listing from the Christian broadcaster TBN, which names him Senior Director of Donor Relations. That same listing notes he was still working at the time as a Samaritan’s Purse project manager, so for at least part of that period he held both jobs.

By August 2023, when he spoke at a men’s retreat hosted by a North Carolina church, his BGEA title had grown to Vice President of Donor Ministries. The biography written for that appearance described his Samaritan’s Purse years, more than 20 as a project manager and more than 15 on its board of directors, only in the past tense.

His work at Samaritan’s Purse touched two of its larger programs. He did ministry assessment for Operation Christmas Child, the shoebox gift program that reaches children in more than 100 countries a year. He also worked in logistics for World Medical Mission, which places Christian doctors and dentists at mission hospitals overseas for two-year terms.

Where Roy Graham grew up

Franklin Graham married Jane Austin Cunningham on August 14, 1974, in a ceremony his father officiated. Their second child, Roy, was born in 1977 at Watauga County Hospital in Boone, the same hospital where his younger siblings Edward and Cissie were later born. The family lived on George Hayes Road. Will, the oldest of the four, was the only one born outside Boone, in Colorado, according to Edward’s own account in a recorded interview.

The rest of what’s on record

Roy Graham’s brother Edward has said, in that same interview, that Roy lives in the Charlotte area, close to BGEA’s headquarters. A business database lists the same city.

Most of what else is documented about him comes from a single source: the biography written for his 2023 speaking engagement, the same one that named his BGEA title. It says he holds a business management degree from Liberty University and spent six years as a hunting and fishing guide in southwest Alaska, though it does not say when. It also names his wife as Donna and says the couple have three children. BGEA’s UK affiliate separately confirms that all four of Franklin Graham’s children are married, but nothing beyond that one 2023 biography documents Roy’s marriage specifically.

The week Billy Graham died

Roy Graham’s clearest appearance in public records came the week his grandfather died. He had made one earlier public appearance, too. In May 2017, he accepted the World Evangelist Award on his grandfather’s behalf at a Charlotte event hosted by Concerned Women for America of North Carolina.

Billy Graham died at his home in Montreat, North Carolina, on February 21, 2018, at age 99. Three days later his casket arrived at the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, carried in by 12 of his grandsons, Roy and Will among them. The public was invited to pay respects on February 26 and 27, when the casket lay inside Billy Graham’s restored childhood home on the library grounds, and more than 13,000 people came through over those two days.

Roy stood in the receiving line on both days, shaking hands as visitors passed through. On the first day, he spoke with a reporter from the North Carolina station WRAL, saying he was struck by how many strangers in the line could name “the exact date, time and place” they had once heard his grandfather preach. A second station, WXII 12 News, filmed him speaking that same week, though only the video appears to have survived online. Together, those two appearances are the closest thing to an interview he has given.

Billy Graham’s body went on to lie in honor at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on February 28 and March 1. The private funeral followed on March 2 in Charlotte, where the 12 grandsons carried the casket once more. Roy Graham has not appeared in press coverage since.

Common questions about Roy Austin Graham