The evaluation of partonic distributions presents a challenge for QCD, and in particular for its Euclidean lattice realization. Recently, objects called quasi-distributions (which become standard distributions in a limit of the longitudinal momentum of the target hadron going to infinity) have been proposed. We present a non-perturbative, dynamical evaluation of the quark quasi-distribution amplitude (QDA) of the pion in the framework of chiral quark models (the Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model and the spectral quark model). We arrive at simple but nontrivial analytic expressions, where the dependence on the longitudinal momentum, the momentum fraction, or the transverse-momentum (for the unintegrated objects) can be explicitly assessed. For the parton distribution amplitude (PDA), we carry out the necessary QCD evolution from the constituent quark model scale to higher scales accessible on the lattice, and compare favorably to the LaMET data.