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Nicole Curran is the wife of Joe Lacob, the majority owner of the Golden State Warriors. The philanthropist and former teacher first met Lacob in 2006 and they got engaged a few years later. The couple now lives in Atherton, California.
Here’s what you need to know about Joe Lacob’s wife Nicole Curran:
1. Nicole Curran Was Raised by a Single Mother & Worked a Lot of Jobs to Help Make Ends Meet
Curran had a difficult upbringing, with her parents getting divorced when she was 4 years old, Mercury News reported. She grew up in Washington, D.C., with just her mother Barbara Levac, who worked hard to provide for her daughter as a legal assistant at various law firms.
When she was 13 years old, Curran was sent by her mother to live at a boarding school for orphans called the Milton Hershey School in Pennsylvania, the publication reported. “Could you imagine being a 13 year old girl and being dropped off,” she shared. The mother-and-daughter duo had been moving from one apartment to the next as Levac tried to make ends meet and she’d had to move into one place that didn’t allow children, Curran told the San Francisco Chronicle.
While at the boarding school, Curran worked at a dairy farm milking cows twice a day, she told the Chronicle. The farm was close to Hershey’s chocolate factory and she shared that when she smells chocolate she’s often brought back to that time in her life. She also had to attend classes and church, and Curran recalled feeling encouraged and supported by one teacher in particular, her history teacher Mr. Jackson.
Two years later, at the age of 15, Curran’s mother had a more stable home environment and the teenager returned to D.C., she told Mercury News. Despite that, Curran’s mother was working the night shift which meant her daughter was often on her own. Curran worked several jobs, including at an ice cream parlor, at a hair salon on weekends, and she did some modeling.
After graduating from high school, she took a year off to work and save money before enrolling at George Washington University. However, when she arrived, she learned that she’d been granted a full scholarship from an anonymous donor. “I always wonder if there was someone I may have known in my life who may have funded that scholarship,” she told the Chronicle. “I have no idea, but I do know that I never met another person in that scholarship program.”
2. Nicole Curran Worked for Several Years as a Teacher Before Getting a Job in the Wine Industry
After graduating from university, Curran worked for seven years as a public school teacher. She taught history and government, as well as one year of sex education, at a high school in D.C. She told Mercury News that she was earning only $23,500 annually as a teacher despite working 80-hour weeks.
Curran later moved to Arizona after marrying a doctor but she remained in the educational sector, helping youth transition from Black Canyon Prison to the Phoenix Union District High School, she told the publication.
Curran made a big change in her life and career afterward as she moved from Arizona to Napa, California, and started working in the wine industry. She said after she moved to Napa, she lived and worked at La Jota in sales and marketing.
From there, she moved on to luxury goods company LVMH, where she told On the Trail that she “repped Krug, Dom Perignon, and Veuve Clicquot in the Bay Area for high-end accounts… It was a very good job and it was very suited to my love. I basically got paid to drink for a living.”
3. Nicole Curran Met Joe Lacob at a Golf Tournament & the 2 Are Now Married
PIC: this is what 70 wins look like! @Warriors Primary Owner Joe Lacob & Nicole. Only 2nd team EVER in NBA to win 70
Curran met her now-husband Joe Lacob at a golf tournament in Pebble Beach in 2006, according to Mercury News. She was divorced by then and at the time, she was still working for LVMH and she told On the Trail that when they met, he told her, “Oh, you’re in the wine business? I have this favorite wine, but I can’t remember what it is. Can you give me your email because I want to hear what you have to say about it when I figure it out.”
She said she thought his comment was “a bit strange” and “definitely one of the more interesting pick-up lines.” She told the outlet that he emailed her and told her the 1982 Latour was his favorite wine. “I responded immediately to him, saying: ‘That’s too bad. The 1982 Lafite is so much better,'” she laughed as she recounted the story. She said she thought he was “a little full of himself,” though she later realized that he actually has a great palate.
“It wasn’t him trying to be pretentious,” she explained, “he really did just like the 1982 Latour because he thought it tasted good!” She joked that the couple ended up doing a side-by-side tasting and she did convince him that the 1982 Lafite was better. She also said that when they started dating, he brought her a new bottle of Bordeaux wine from 1982 for each date.
Lacob described his partner as “very direct” with “No hidden agendas.” He told Mercury News, “She is tough. She can be pretty volatile. But she is outgoing naturally. She’s got a million friends. Always ready to go to a party, go to an event. Me you have to drag.”
The couple has been together since before Lacob bought the Warriors. While they’ve remained pretty private about their relationship, she was described in several articles in the mid-2010s as his fiancé and more recent features have referred to Curran as Lacob’s wife.
4. Nicole Curran Is the President of the Warriors Community Foundation & Was Honored for Her Philanthropy
Curran is involved in the Warriors as the president of the Warriors Community Foundation board, though she’s shared that her husband didn’t tell her in advance that he was naming her to the board back in 2012. “I was upset that he didn’t discuss the position with me,” she admitted to the San Francisco Chronicle. “But the truth is, it was meant to be.”
The Warriors Community Foundation “supports education and youth development to promote thriving students, schools and communities,” its website says. Curran has currently been serving as the board president for over a decade, with Mercury News reporting that her background as an educator has made her want to focus on those initiatives. “Early childhood development, elementary literacy, middle schools, STEM, college access, that’s their area of focus,” the publication reported.
Her profile on the foundation’s website shares that since she took over, it managed to have over $24 million in impact, which includes $13 million in grants to various education-based nonprofits. In 2016, she told On the Trail, “Last year we gave away a million dollars in grants and I personally went to twenty-five of the applicants, interacted with the kids, looked at their programs, and evaluated them. Right there with winning, I think it’s one of the most valuable experiences I’ve ever had and I really enjoy doing it.”
She told Mercury News that she’s had some people do incredible things for her in her life, including her anonymous scholarship donor and her history teacher at Milton Hershey School, which inspired her philanthropy. She said it’s made her want to be that person for others, and inspire others to do the same in their lives. Her efforts certainly haven’t gone unnoticed as Curran was inducted into the Alameda County Women’s Hall of Fame in 2018 in the philanthropy category.
5. Nicole Curran Spoke Out About Cyberbullying After She Was Attacked Online Over an Interaction With Beyonce
I’m pleased to share I’ve joined the Board of Directors of the @warriors Community Foundation. Thank you to Nicole Lacob & the other board members of @DubsCommunity
Curran spoke out against bullying, specifically cyberbullying, after she found herself the target of the ire of Beyonce fans over a viral moment during Game 3 of the NBA Finals in June 2019. Beyonce and Jay-Z were the guests of Lacob and Curran and sat beside them during the game. An interaction was caught on the cameras as Curran leaned over Beyonce to speak to Jay-Z and suffice it to say, the singer’s fans weren’t pleased about it.
“Beyoncé and Jay-Z, who are perfectly lovely people, were our guests at a game, and a short clip was shown on TV,” she explained in an Haute Living interview. She said she asked her guests what they wanted to drink and Jay-Z said he wanted a vodka tonic. Since it was loud at the game, she needed to lean over as the two had trouble communicating. “I leaned over and asked Jay-Z if he wanted a lime in his drink; and, that’s when the bullying started,” she shared.
At the time, she told ESPN that she was “in tears” over the death threats she’d received on social media and had been forced to deactivate her accounts (her Instagram is now set to private). While speaking with Haute Living, she said she’d found it devastating but that she was an adult and couldn’t imagine teenagers going through it.
“I really think that there is some sort of responsibility that these social media platforms need to take to, hopefully, end this madness,” she shared. “I can’t even imagine what it would be like to go through such a traumatic experience as a 13-year-old.”
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Nicole Curran, Joe Lacob’s Wife: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know