” it feels so painful that after 41 years of our marriage we are going our separate ways ” Andy Reid tearfully open up about the 3 main reasons for this heartbreaking decision

Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid is all about football, family, faith — and his wife, Tammy.

Andy’s relationship with Tammy traces back to the early days of his career when he was a football player at Brigham Young University. After meeting on campus, the couple began dating. By that summer, things were serious between the pair, and at the suggestion of Tammy’s father, Andy converted to Mormonism. A year later, Andy and Tammy were married in 1981.

Now, four decades and five children later, Andy and Tammy say they’re just as in love as ever. Even when Andy’s team doesn’t win the big trophy, he still has his “trophy wife” by his side. In fact, Andy admits that he still calls Tammy his girlfriend and tries to continually do special things for her.

“I’ve been … with her for about 40 years now,” he said in February 2020 after winning the Super Bowl with the Chiefs. “Every day is a special day, I’m telling ya. I call her my girlfriend for that reason. You never lose interest if you do that, right, you guys out there? Call them your girlfriend and you always do special things for them.”

Tammy has supported Andy through his entire professional coaching career, starting with his stint with the Green Bay Packers in 1992 all the way through his current gig as the Chiefs head coach, where he earned his third Super Bowl victory during the 2024 championship game.

“Maybe people don’t know this about me but I’m a very positive person and I have the ultimate trust in Andrew as a coach,” Tammy explained in a Chiefs profile of Andy. “We’ve been through 38 years of coaching and so I never don’t think we’re going to win.”

The coach shared that family is his priority during media week before his second Super Bowl appearance in two years against the San Francisco 49ers.

“I’m blessed to have a great wife who likes to travel and see all the grandkids,” he said, per Deseret News. “She has a little bit more freedom to do that.” Tammy was there to support her husband as he led his team to another Super Bowl win in 2024.

So, who is Andy Reid’s wife? Here’s everything to know about Tammy Reid.

She grew up in Tennessee and Arizona

Tammy was born on Nov. 6, 1959, in New York. She was raised in Memphis, Tennessee, before she moved to Arizona, where she attended high school. Growing up, she said her mother and father set an incredible example for the person she wanted to become and were always involved in their community.

“My parents are the greatest examples of service that I’ve ever met in my whole life,” she told The Time Herald. “There was hardly a day that went by when my mom or dad wasn’t helping someone: driving someone somewhere, fixing something, taking a meal or baking something.”

Following her high school graduation, Tammy enrolled at Brigham Young University.

She and Andy met while attending the same college.

While Andy and Tammy were students at Brigham Young University, they both happened to enroll in the same tennis class, as they shared during a virtual fireside chat for their church, the Latter-day Saints of Greater Kansas City. Tammy admitted that she immediately thought Andy was cute and wanted him to ask her out.

“I wanted him to ask me out but he wouldn’t ask me out so I finally goaded him into asking me out and we played racquetball for our first date,” Tammy shared.

She further opened up about her first impression of Andy in a Chiefs profile on the coach.

“He had this air about him—this confidence,” she recalled, “but he wouldn’t ask me out, and I’d never not had a guy that I wanted to ask me out not ask me out. So the second half of the semester, since it’s a half credit, we played badminton. We were playing after he had already beaten me at tennis and I’m like, ‘Well, I could beat you at racquetball.’

The pair agreed to play together, though Andy didn’t exactly let his date win.

“He killed me,” said Tammy. “Even though I’m really good, he killed me.”

The couple went on to date throughout the semester and continued their relationship even when they spent their summer break in different places.

Andy converted to Mormonism before proposing to Tammy
After dating for some time, Andy came to visit Tammy and her family while they were apart for summer break. When a then long-haired Andy pulled up in a Volkswagen bus, Tammy says her father was initially hesitant about the relationship. After Andy spent a week with the family, her father sat down with the couple to encourage Andy to join The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

He said, ‘You know, we want you, Andy, to figure out what our daughter’s all about and what she’s all about is our church and the gospel … If you want to find out more about that, you should go take the discussions from our missionaries and find out about it and see if it’s something that would work into your life,’ ” Tammy explained during the same live stream.

Andy agreed to meet with the missionaries and consider things throughout the rest of the summer. Then, when he was getting ready to head back to school, Andy called to ask Tammy if her father would baptize him.

In August 1981, a year after Andy was baptized, the couple married.

They share five children who were all born in different states.

While Andy was finishing his master’s degree in Utah, the couple welcomed their first child, Garrett. They went on to welcome four more children — Britt, Crosby, Drew Ann and Spencer — who were all born in different states due to Andy’s coaching career. After Drew Ann was born in Missouri, Tammy became pregnant with their youngest child, Spencer, and joked that they were going to have to move so he would be born in a different state than his siblings.

“I told Andrew, ‘We have to move!’ And he’s like, ‘Why?’ And I said, ‘Because we’ve already had a baby here!’ And we laughed about it,” Tammy said during the live stream. “Well, a few months later, he got a call…to be the tight end coach and assistant offensive line coach for the Green Bay Packers. So off to Green Bay we went and baby number five was born there. So we have five children all born in five different states!”

In August 2012, the couple’s son Garrett passed away following a heroin overdose, per The New York Times. At the time, Garrett was working for the Eagles as an assistant to the strength and conditioning staff and was found in his dorm room at the team’s training site in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Garrett, who was 29 at the time of his death, had struggled with drug addiction for almost a decade. Following Garrett’s passing, Andy and Tammy thanked fans for their support.

“Even though he lost the battle that has been ongoing for the last eight years, we will always remember him as a fighter who had a huge, loving heart,” they said in a press statement.

After the Chiefs won the Super Bowl in 2020, Tammy briefly addressed the death of her oldest child. “The fact that we were all here, that was amazing,” Tammy said of the game, referencing her other four children. “Except for ‘G.’ So sad, but I know he’s watching us.”

She’s involved in philanthropy and volunteering

Through the years, Tammy has become incredibly involved in volunteer work and philanthropic efforts, particularly in helping those who have dealt with domestic violence. While Tammy and her family were living in Philadelphia as Andy served as head coach for the Eagles, she began working with domestic violence charity Laurel House.

“I knew that Laurel House was something I could pour my heart into because I am married to one of the greatest men in the world,” Tammy told The Times Herald. “I’m sad to know that there are women out there who are not. Andrew’s my best friend and we make a great team. I wish every woman could have the kind of loving, supportive relationship that we have.”

Tammy eventually joined Laurel House’s advisory board, where she did everything from brainstorming new projects to planning their yearly galas. She later became the public face of Laurel House and often spoke to church and youth groups, women’s organizations and chambers of commerce.

In addition to joining volunteer organizations, Tammy also founded the Eagles Women’s Association to help encourage coaches’ and players’ wives and girlfriends to become more involved in the community. Together, the women took part in volunteer opportunities like processing food donations and hosting an annual playground build.

She has an extensive quilt collection that has been displayed in a museum
Tammy has a collection of quilts that includes over 150 pieces. While Tammy doesn’t consider herself a “professional” collector, her quilts have been displayed in a museum and even inspired a book: Every Quilt Has a Story: The Tammy Reid Quilt Collection. The book showcases a portion of Tammy’s collection, which includes pieces that date back to the mid-1800s.

Although some quilt collectors prefer to keep their prized possessions perfectly stored away, Tammy says she prefers to put them on display in her home and often changes them out through the seasons.

“My grandmother gave me my first quilt when I was a child. And my mother gave us a quilt for a wedding present. This is what inspired my love of quilts,” Tammy told the Hermann Advertiser Courier. “I am partial to red, white and green quilts, especially at Christmas time. I will pile quilts everywhere during the Christmas season.