Mike Wolfe Gives Big Update on ‘American Pickers’ & Girlfriend Leticia Cline After Horrific Accident

Mike Wolfe, his brother Robbie, Danielle Colby, and Jon “Jersey Jon” Szalay are back on the road as American Pickers Season 27 continues. The popular History Channel series makes its return on February 15 with back-to-back episodes. The show had been on hiatus since before thew holidays. First, the guys pick a Tennessee stockpile untouched for decades and uncover dinosaur fossils at a Kansas boneyard. Then Mike and “Jersey Jon” look at a Mississippi historian’s Southern-centric collection and visit an historic Missouri home where they find a rare jukebox. More installments will follow going into April. 

And if you can’t get enough of Mike’s treasure hunting adventures, he is also hosting the upcoming show History’s Greatest Picks. Much like American Pickers, this project digs into artifacts from all sides of the spectrum from Captain Kirk’s Star Trek command chair to Lee Harvey Oswald’s exhumed coffin. It’s not only about telling the backstory of these one-of-a-kind items, but how they ended up resurfacing at some jaw-dropping values. 

The History Channel reemergence for Mike comes amid an emotional time for the beloved treasure hunter. He and his girlfriend, Leticia Cline, were in a serious car accident on September 12. They were struck by another vehicle and left him with various facial injuries. Cline was hospitalized with a dislocated jaw broken in three places, broken sternum, broken ribs, collapsed lung, and bruising to her spine. 

Here Mike, who also announced his mother Rita died in early February, opens up about the last few months and American Pickers’ status. 

Fans are excited to see you back on television, coming out of your devastating car accident with you and Leticia. Would you say that brought you two closer together and made you look at life differently? 

Mike Wolfe: Her father was a collector. She learned a lot from him. I think for people who collect, we have a different lens and levels of different emotions from different time periods. Her father and her mom and dad owned a roadside attraction because they were by Mammoth Cave National Park. They had a rock shop, so people would travel in and out of their town to go to the park. So Leticia, at 9-years-old was selling geodes and had a petting zoo in her front yard. She is a little bit of a hustler like me. We’ve connected in so many different ways, but the accident was so much harder on her because of the level of her injuries. She broke her jaw in three places, her ribs, her intercostal nerves. She had a partially collapsed lung. It’s funny we were in a little 1958 Porsche and a drunk driver hit us in an Escalade.

 

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How is she doing? 

I’ve watched her go through her journey with such dignity and strength. When she puts her mind to do something, there is absolutely no one who can stand in her way. We both love to pick. She has been traveling on the road with me for a long time. She says, “Babe, I’m going to start a show called The Pick After The Pick.” That’s because after I was done filming, she would go in and say, “Can I buy this?” She would help film the van up to behind the scenes. We make a pretty good team together. I’m so glad you brought her up. 

We got to see a spin-off now. 

Oh lord! I don’t know if my heart could handle that one. 

What’s the status of American Pickers? 

We’ve got shows coming up. We were in talks behind the scenes about when we want to fire this thing up again. The reason we took a hiatus was because the network had a number of shows that were brand-new and just sitting there They were like, “Let’s just chill out for a little bit. Let’s air some shows and get back at it.” Listen, I don’t take lightly this new show [History’s Greatest Picks] is going to air because I struggled for five years to make my show happen and to be on television. So, when that happened and I learned so much, what I did learn was there are so many great ideas floating around out there, but so little of them come to fruition when it comes to television. This was a great idea someone had, and it was just the right time. I feel so proud to produce content still for History after all these years. 

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What would you say is the state of the picking industry compared to when you started with the show? 

It is booming. It’s booming in a different way. I mean 1980s stuff is really highly collectible, which kind of freak me out. I’m a guy who graduated high school in 1982. Here’s the deal. Younger people don’t call it picking. They call it sourcing. They don’t say it’s an antique shop. They say it’s a vintage shop, which is unique and different to me. Also, I’m embracing that because either way you package it, this is all the same thing. There is never going to be an end to someone wanting to learn about their family’s history, community history, and hands-on. What I mean by that is actually touching, finding something, discovering something. All of us are detectives in a way. We’re born that way. Every child is born that way, but some people as they get older when these magnets stick to them and have responsibilities, some people don’t remember those times until they see something at a yard sale. That may bring back or cloak them in so many memories. None of that will ever end. Prices will rise and fall, but as far as the discovery and storytelling ,that will never end. 

Season 27 of American Pickers continues, February 15, 8/7c, History Channel

History’s Greatest Picks premiere, February 22, 9/8c, History Channel