Tracy Wilhelmy Stevens is the wife of Boston Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens. They have been married since 2003 and have two children together, a son, Brady, and a daughter, Kinsley.
In addition to being a key part of Brad Stevens’ personal life, Tracy Stevens has been a player in his professional life as well. Tracy Stevens, a contract attorney with a law degree from Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland, helped negotiate her husband’s contract when he was hired as the Celtics head coach ahead of the 2013-2014 season, according to the Boston Herald.
Here’s what you need to know about Brad Stevens’ wife Tracy Stevens:
1. Brad Stevens & Tracy Wilhelmy Met When They Were Freshmen in College
Brad and Tracy Stevens and their two children. (Life of Dad)
Tracy Wilhelmy and Brad Stevens met when they were both freshmen at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, according to The New York Times. They both graduated in 1999 from the school. After years of dating, the couple married in August 2003, according to The Times.
In an interview with Life of Dad, Brad Stevens compared being the Celtics’ coach to being a father in a sense that he puts forth his best effort on the sidelines the same way he does at home.
You want to put your signature on this job. You want to do the very best you can. You want the people that you are working with to feel like you are invested in them and that you are putting a lot time and thought into them. You want to do that with your own children. You want them to know that you are doing everything you can to help them have a great next day.
He said in the same interview that the biggest things he tries to instill in his children at their young ages is to be kind and do right.
2. Tracy Stevens Has a Law Degree & Worked as an Attorney Prior to the Birth of Her Daughter
Brad Stevens (Getty)
A few years after graduating from DePauw, Tracy Stevens decided to go back to school to pursue a law degree, according to Cleveland.com. She did so to try and support the couple when Brad Stevens took a volunteer coaching position at Butler University and his future was uncertain.
She graduated from Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland and became an attorney, according to Cleveland.com. She specialized in contract and labor law and worked at Indianapolis-based Bingham Greenebaum Doll LLP, according to LawyerDB.org. After Kinsley’s birth, she left the firm “to run the household so Brad can focus on coaching,” DePauw’s alumni newsletter wrote.
When Brad Stevens was hired by the Celtics as their head coach she was actually the one that negotiated his contract, the Indianapolis Star reported shortly after he was officially announced as the coach.
Brad uses a group to do his speaking and marketing deals, but I do his contracts. I was a labor and employment attorney so looking at a contract is exactly what I was trained to do. This was not like a grueling negotiation. It was a conversation mostly between Brad and Danny Ainge, but I had a few conversations with their general counsel about a couple of technical points.
3. Tracy Stevens Was the One to Tell Brad to ‘Go For’ a Job At Butler
When Brad Stevens graduated from DePauw, he started his career at Eli Lilly and Company, a pharmaceutical company headquartered in Indianapolis, according to Cleveland.com. In 2000, while dating Tracy, he informed her about the job offer he had just received from Butler to work in its basketball office on a volunteer basis. She told him to go for the job.
“That’s the only time I ever questioned it,” Cleveland.com wrote in 2010. “It was so obvious to me that this was his passion and this was going to make him happy. And then that was the end of it. I loved him.”
4. Tracy Wilhelmy Stevens Played Soccer at DePauw
Before attending DePauw, Tracy Wilhelmy went to Rocky River High School in Ohio.
While Brad Stevens pursued his degree in economics at DePauw, his future wife was a political science double major and played on the school’s soccer team. She was the captain of the team as a senior and was a member of the first-ever Tigers team to make the Division III NCAA tournament.
The Tigers women’s soccer program has appeared in the NCAA tournament seven times since then. In 2014, Tracy Stevens was named to serve as a trustee at Butler and was also the president of the school’s Alumni Association Board of Directors.
5. Tracy Stevens’ Mother Died of Cancer In 2004
Boston Celtics head coach Brad Stevens and Tracy Stevens visit Alyssa and Mom at Boston Children’s Hospital in 2016. (Getty)
One of the reasons that Tracy Stevens decided to go to law school in Cleveland was because her mother, Mary Kay, had been diagnosed with cancer and lived close to the university, according to Cleveland.com. She received a law degree in 2003 and married Brad Stevens a few months later. Just about one year after that, she died of the disease.
Partly because of the circumstances, Brad and Tracy Stevens became involved with the American Cancer Society’s Coaches Vs. Cancer program, which empowers collegiate coaches and their teams to help funding and awareness for cancer research.
At an event for the program in 2010 one day before the NCAA Final Four, Brad and his wife attended an event in Indianapolis. Tracy said to Fox 59 that the specific event “has been a grounding source for us reminding us there are things more important than a basketball game. We remember people we love and celebrate survivors who are also here tonight.”
Tickets for the event were sold out and it raised $45,000 for the cause. In addition to working with the American Cancer Society, Brad Stevens and his wife have volunteered for the Jukes Foundation for Kids, which benefits children.
When former Butler player Andrew Smith was dying of cancer, Brad Stevens took a leave of absence in January 2016 to visit him in the hospital. Smith died one week after that, and his former coach was the one to deliver the emotional eulogy at the funeral.
Tracy Stevens also serves on the board of advisors of the Greater Boston Food Bank.
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Tracy Wilhelmy Stevens, Brad Stevens’ Wife: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know