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Knievel ended high school after his sophomore year and got a job with the Anaconda Mining Company as a diamond drill operator in the copper mines. He was promoted to surface duty where he drove a large earth mover. Knievel was dismissed when he made the earth mover do a motorcycle-type wheelie and drove it into Butte's main power line. The incident left the city without electricity for several hours. Idle, Knievel began to get into more and more trouble around Butte.

Always looking for new thrills and challenges, Knievel participated in local professional rodeos and ski-jumping events, including winning the Northern Rocky Mountain Ski Association Class A Men's ski jumping championship in 1957. During the late 1950s, Knievel joined the United States Army. His athletic ability allowed him to join the track team where he was a pole vaulter.

Shortly after getting married, Knievel left Butte to play minor pro hockey, joining the Charlotte Clippers of the Eastern Hockey League in 1959. Realizing that he wasn't talented enough to make it into the National Hockey League and that the real money in sports was in owning a team, Knievel returned to Butte and started the Butte Bombers, a semi-pro hockey team. To help promote his team and earn some money, he convinced the 1960 Olympic Czechoslovakian hockey team to play his Butte Bombers in a warm-up game to the Olympics. Knievel was ejected from the game minutes into the third period and left the stadium. When the Czechoslovakian officials went to the box office to collect the expense money that the team was promised, workers discovered the game receipts had been stolen. The U.S. Olympic Committee ended up paying the Czechoslovakian team's expenses to avoid an international incident.

After the birth of his first son, Kelly, Knievel realized that he needed to come up with a new way to support his family financially. Using the hunting and fishing skills taught to him by his grandfather, Knievel started the Sur-Kill Guide Service. He guaranteed that if a hunter employed his service and paid his fee that they would get the big game animal that they wanted or he would refund their money. Business was very good until game wardens realized that he was taking his clients into Yellowstone National Park to find their prey. As a result of this poaching, Knievel had to end his new business venture.

After returning home from Washington, Knievel decided to stop committing crime. He joined the motocross circuit and had moderate success, but he still couldn't make enough money to support his family. During 1962, Knievel broke his collarbone and shoulder in a motocross accident. The doctors said he couldn't race for at least six months. To help support his family, he switched careers and sold insurance for the Combined Insurance Company of America.

Knievel did very well as an insurance salesman (even selling insurance policies to several institutionalized mental patients) and wanted recognition for his efforts. When the company refused to promote him to vice-president after a few months on the job, he quit. Wanting a new start away from Butte, Knievel moved his family to Moses Lake, Washington. There, he opened a Honda motorcycle dealership and promoted motocross racing. Once, Knievel offered a $100 discount to anybody who could beat him at arm wrestling. Despite his best efforts the store eventually closed.

Not having any way to support his family, Knievel recalled the Joie Chitwood show he saw as a boy and decided that he could do a similar show using a motorcycle. Promoting the show himself, Knievel rented the venue, wrote the press releases, set up the show, sold the tickets and served as his own master of ceremonies. After enticing the small crowd with a few wheelies, he proceeded to jump a twenty-foot-long box of rattlesnakes and two mountain lions. Despite landing short and having his back wheel hit the box containing the rattlesnakes, Knievel managed to land safely.

The next performance was on February 10, in Barstow, California. During the performance, Knievel attempted a new stunt where he would jump, spread eagle, over a speeding motorcycle. Knievel jumped too late and the motorcycle hit him in the groin, tossing him fifteen feet into the air. He was placed in the hospital as a result of his injuries. When released, he returned to Barstow to finish the performance he had started almost a month before.

On June 19 in Missoula, Montana, he attempted to jump twelve cars and a cargo van. The distance he had for takeoff didn't allow him to get up enough speed. His back wheel hit the top of the van while his front wheel hit the top of the landing ramp. Knievel ended up with a severely broken arm and several broken ribs. The crash and subsequent stay in the hospital were a publicity windfall.

On May 30, 1967, Knievel successfully cleared sixteen cars in Gardena, California. Then he attempted the same jump on July 28, 1967, in Graham, Washington, where he had his next serious crash. Landing his cycle on a panel truck that was the last vehicle, Knievel was thrown from his bike. This time he suffered a serious concussion. After a month, he recovered and returned to Graham on August 18 to finish the show, but the result was the same, only this time the injuries were more serious. Again coming up short, Knievel crashed, breaking his left wrist, right knee, and two ribs.

Knievel used his own money to have actor/director John Derek produce a film of the Caesars' jump. To keep costs low, Derek used his then-wife, Linda Evans, as one of the camera operators. It was Evans who filmed Knievel's famous landing. On the morning of the jump, Knievel stopped in the casino and placed a single $100 dollar bet on the blackjack table (which he lost), stopped by the bar and got a shot of Wild Turkey and then headed outside where he was joined by several members of the Caesars staff, as well as two scantily clad showgirls. After doing his normal pre-jump show and a few warm up approaches, Knievel began his real approach. When he hit the takeoff ramp, he felt the motorcycle unexpectedly decelerate. The sudden loss of power on the takeoff caused Knievel to come up short and land on the safety ramp which was supported by a van. This caused the handlebars to be ripped out of his hands as he tumbled over them onto the pavement where he skidded into the Dunes parking lot. As a result of the crash, Knievel suffered a crushed pelvis and femur, fractures to his hip, wrist and both ankles and a concussion that kept him in a coma for 29 days.

To keep his name in the news, Knievel started describing his biggest stunt ever, a motorcycle jump across the Grand Canyon. Just five months after his near fatal crash, Knievel performed another jump. On May 25, 1968, in Scottsdale, Arizona, Knievel crashed while attempting to jump fifteen Mustangs. Knievel ended up breaking his right leg and foot as a result of the crash.

On February 28, he set a new world record by jumping 19 cars in Ontario, California. On May 10, Knievel crashed while attempting to jump 13 Pepsi delivery trucks. His approach was complicated by the fact that he had to start on pavement, cut across grass, and then return to pavement. His lack of speed caused the motorcycle to come down front wheel first. He managed to hold on until the cycle hit the base of the ramp. After being thrown off he skidded for 50 feet (15 m). Knievel broke his collarbone, suffered a compound fracture of his right arm and broke both legs.

Knievel continued to jump and promote his Labor Day assault on Snake River Canyon. On March 3, 1972 at the Cow Palace in Daly City, California, Knievel got into a scuffle with a couple of Hells Angels in the audience. After making a successful jump, he tried to come to a quick stop because of a short landing area. Knievel suffered a broken back and a concussion after getting thrown off and run over by his motorcycle, a Harley-Davidson.

The launch at Snake River Canyon was at 3:36 p.m. local time. The steam that powered the engine had to get up to a temperature of 700 °F (370 °C). Upon take-off, the drogue parachute accidentally deployed when the three 1/4 inch bolts holding the cover for the chute sheared off with the force of the blast. The deployed chute caused enough drag that even though the skycycle made it all the way across the canyon the wind began to cause it to drift back as the skycycle turned on its side and started to descend into the canyon. By the time it hit the bottom of the canyon, the wind had pushed it across the river enough so that it landed half in and half out of the water. Just a couple feet more in the water, and Knievel would have drowned. Knievel survived the jump with only minor injuries.

Fanfare Films started production of The Evel Knievel Story, a 1971 movie starring George Hamilton as Knievel.

Knievel made several television appearances, including a guest spot on The Bionic Woman where he played himself.

On January 31, 1977, during a dress rehearsal for a CBS special on live daredevil stunts at the Chicago International Amphitheatre, Knievel crashed, breaking both arms and his collarbone. In the process, a misplaced cameraman was injured, losing an eye. In June 1977, Warner Bros. released Viva Knievel!, a movie starring Knievel as himself and co-starring Lauren Hutton, Gene Kelly, and Red Buttons.

While Knievel was healing from his latest round of injuries, the book Evel Knievel on Tour was released. Authored by Knievel's promoter for the Snake River Canyon jump, Shelly Saltman, the book painted a less than perfect picture of Knievel's character and alleged that he abused his wife and kids and that he used drugs. Knievel, with both arms still in casts, flew to California to confront Saltman, a VP at Twentieth Century Fox. Outside the studio commissary, one of Knievel's friends grabbed Saltman and held him, while Knievel attacked him with an aluminum baseball bat, declaring, "I'm going to kill you!" According to a witness to the attack, Knievel struck repeated blows at Saltman's head, with Saltman blocking the blows with his left arm. Saltman's arm and wrist were shattered in several places before he fell to the ground unconscious. It took numerous surgeries and permanent metal plates in his arm to eventually give Saltman back the use of his arm. He had been a left-handed competitive tennis player before the attack.

In 1986, Knievel was arrested for soliciting an undercover policewoman in Kansas City, Missouri. Knievel's wife, Linda, left him and returned home to Butte.

On November 19, 1999, on a special platform built on the fountains at Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip near Las Vegas, Nevada (site of Evel’s jump New Year's Eve 1967), Evel married long time girlfriend, 30-year-old Krystal Kennedy of Clearwater, Florida. Long-time friend Engelbert Humperdinck sent a recorded tribute to the couple. They were divorced in 2001.