Tabarlet was born to Adolph Rueben Tabarlet and the former Evelyn Marie Laborde in Marksville, the seat of Avoyelles Parish in south central Louisiana. Tabarlet and his father became partners in a bakery business in Glenmora in south Rapides Parish and in Jonesboro. On June 5, 1926, Tabarlet married the former Mamman Mallette of Glenmora, daughter of Julius Gibson Mallette and Daisy Belle Johnson of Longleaf in western Rapides Parish.
He was educated in Marksville public schools and attended the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, then known as Southwestern Louisiana Institute.
During World War I, he served at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in the United States Marine Corps. The couple had two children, Bobby Eugene Tabarlet (1927–1999), an educator in Shreveport, and Leah Marye (1942). Tabarlet was active in the Democratic Party and ran unsuccessfully for the Louisiana House of Representatives in 1936, losing to L. L. Kilpatrick.
Tabarlet was first elected mayor of Jonesboro in 1938 and was re-elected in 1942.
He resigned the office in 1944, midway in his second term, to serve as the home service representative of the American Red Cross and thereafter as the veterans" service officer for the United States. Department of Veteran"s Affairs. He returned to the office of mayor in 1948, when his successor died in office.
He was elected to a full term in 1950 but served less than a year thereafter because of his death at the age of fifty. He was affiliated with the Methodist Church, the Masonic lodge, the American Legion, and the Lions Club.
The Tabarlets are interred at Greenwood Memorial Park in Pineville in Rapides Parish.
Tabarlet Street in Jonesboro bears his name. Son Bobby Tabarlet, formerly a coach at Jonesboro-Hodge High School in Jackson Parish, relocated to Caddo Parish, where he became an early president of the Shreveport/Bossier City chapter (founded 1972) of the educational fraternity Phi Delta Kappa.
The Bobby Tabarlet Memorial Award was established in 2000, a year his death, to recognize an individual who "exemplifies his/her love of our profession through accomplishments, daily work, and relationships with others in a positive and upbeat way – while committed to academic excellence, credibility and professionalism." Another founding member of the chapter was the educator and later State Senator Bachelor of Laws "Buddy" Shaw.
