Getty Steve Kerr and his wife Margot Kerr
Steve Kerr is married to Margot Brennan Kerr and the couple has been together for over 30 years now. The Golden State Warriors head coach met his future wife on a blind date while they were both attending the University of Arizona and the couple has three kids. Margot Kerr is very supportive of her husband’s career.
Here’s what you need to know about Steve Kerr’s wife Margot Brennan Kerr:
1. Steve Kerr & His Wife Margot Kerr Met in College When They Went on a Blind Date Together
Margot Kerr was born Margot Brennan in Tucson, Arizona, in 1967. Her mother, Karen, is an author, a poet and a professor, and Kerr grew up with three siblings. After graduating from high school, she met her future husband when they were both sophomores at the University of Arizona.
“Bruce Fraser, ‘Q’, was my best friend,” Kerr recalled on In My Court, “And he said, ‘Hey, you should meet this girl who’s a really good friend of the girl I’m going out with.” Kerr said he was interested in going on a double date with Fraser, who’s now Kerr’s assistant coach with the Golden State Warriors. Fraser admitted it was a bit of a “selfish” ask just to get his best friend to hang out with them, but that blind date turned into a deep, lasting relationship of over 35 years.
“I think [Fraser] thought, ‘These two are nerdy, they’ll get along,’” Margot Kerr joked while speaking to SF Gate about their first date.
Their relationship had several uncertainties in the early days because they weren’t sure where Kerr’s basketball career would take him. Since Kerr had a redshirt year before his senior season, Margot Kerr graduated a year before her then-boyfriend and was living in Los Angeles where she had a job with an advertising agency, she told SF Gate. Kerr then got drafted by the Phoenix Suns and she said they were both “shocked” by the news.
“It was such a long shot for him to make the NBA,” she told In My Court. The couple made their relationship work long-distance for a year before Margot Kerr left her job and decided to move to Phoenix. However, just before she made the jump, Kerr was traded to the Cleveland Cavaliers so she moved to Ohio with him instead. The couple tied the knot just a couple of years into Kerr’s NBA career and have been married ever since.
2. Margot Kerr & Her Husband Steve Kerr Have 3 Kids Together: 2 Sons & a Daughter
The Kerrs have three kids who are all adults now: Nick Kerr, Madeleine “Maddy” Kerr, and Matthew Kerr. Their eldest, Nick Kerr, was just 3 weeks old when Kerr was traded to Orlando from Cleveland, Margot Kerr told In My Court. “We lived in a Marriott [hotel] for about three weeks in one room,” Kerr shared. “For a first-time mother of a 3-week-old child, that’s a lot. She just rolls with all that stuff,” he praised his wife.
After a year with the Magic, Kerr was traded to the Chicago Bulls for five years, where he would win three NBA championships. During that time, the Kerrs welcomed two more children, Maddy and Matthew. “We somehow hit the lottery with our kids, I can’t believe they turned out so well,” Margot Kerr laughed as she spoke to In My Court. Kerr called his wife an “incredible mother in terms of creating a really happy home.”
Nick Kerr graduated from the University of San Diego, where he played basketball, and is now an assistant coach with the Santa Cruz Warriors, according to his LinkedIn. While speaking with Mercury News, Nick Kerr said he’d always thought about becoming a basketball coach and he realized in college that he “wasn’t good enough to keep playing” professionally but he wanted to still be involved in the game and try to influence and improve players and teams.
Maddy Kerr, who was a volleyball star in college, is a lawyer who graduated from the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Law and was admitted to the State Bar of California in January 2023, according to public records. She now works as a corporate associate at Gunderson Dettmer, her LinkedIn shows. In an interview with Berkeley News, Maddy Kerr said she takes after her mother: “I’m feisty and outspoken like my mom. She’s tough.”
The youngest in the family, Matthew Kerr, isn’t into sports like the rest of the Kerrs but despite that, he’s still very much involved in the sporting world but in a completely different way. After attending USC film school and studying screenwriting and comedy TV writing, Matthew Kerr became a writing assistant on “Ted Lasso” for season 2.
The comedy series, which follows an American football coach hired to coach a British soccer team, quickly became a hit with audiences. “I’m not at all a sports person,” Matthew Kerr shared while speaking with the Athletic about his work on the show. “Which actually made being on ‘Ted Lasso’ really fun, because I think a lot of the people in the room are like that as well, where they’re more interested in the humanities side of sports and sort of how relationships are built or fall apart.”
3. Margot Kerr’s Sister Was in a Serious Motorcycle Accident & Her Mother Wrote a Book About Her Recovery
Margot Kerr’s sister is Rachel Brennan, a high school and college athlete who suffered a devastating injury in the summer of 1995. Brennan was a distance runner who attended Amphitheater High School and UA but when she was 25 years old, she suffered a major brain injury after falling off the back of a friend’s motorcycle in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, Tucson.com reported.
The Los Angeles Times wrote that Brennan wasn’t wearing a helmet and she fell into a four-month coma. After she woke up, Brennan’s physical recovery progressed well as she began walking again with the aid of a cane following months of physical therapy. However, she was diagnosed with retrograde amnesia and has trouble remembering more recent events.
Margot Kerr’s mother Karen Brennan opened up about that period of their lives in a book titled “Being with Rachel: A Personal Story of Memory and Survival.” According to Tucson.com, in her book, she recalled watching her son-in-law Kerr playing a game with the Chicago Bulls against Utah along with her daughter at Thanksgiving a few months after the accident.
“Steve asks us to send his love and best wishes to his sister-in-law, Rachel Brennan, who is recovering from a motorcycle accident at the University of Utah hospital,” the play-by-play announcer shared during the game.
When Brennan heard the message, she smiled and told her mom, “I’m famous,” Karen Brennan recounted. Kerr’s mother-in-law wrote, “If I had to order a son-in-law from heaven, it would be Steve. He’s funny, smart, a terrific father and husband, as well as sensitive and perceptive.”
4. Margot Kerr & Steve Kerr Know Each Other Very Well & She’s Joked That She No Longer Wants to Watch Games With Him
Margot Kerr has opened up about her famous husband and their current situation, giving a glimpse into the Warriors head coach. “He likes the on-court stuff,” she told SF Gate. “Basketball is so pure. He doesn’t like the bureaucracy, the politics, all the crap that goes along with being a GM.”
She also shared that the two both love reading and Margot Kerr will often recommend books for him to read and disconnect from his job. Despite that, she shared that her husband “is so happy” and “loves his job so much.”
After more than 35 years together, it’s natural that they will know each other so well. In fact, one of Margot Kerr’s tweets from May 2022 began circulating on social media as the NBA coach’s wife wrote, “I never want to watch an NBA game with my husband again!” That tweet was posted as the Golden State Warriors were facing the Memphis Grizzlies in Game 6 of the Western Conference semifinals and Kerr was watching from home after getting COVID-19.
“She sat there for about two minutes, and then announced that she was gonna head downstairs to watch the Kardashians instead,” Kerr shared afterward. “So it was a good arrangement. Like all good marriages, you know when to be together and when to give each other a little space. All is good now, though.”
5. Margot Kerr Said She Still Can’t Believe Their Journey Together & He Praised Her for Sticking By Him
Despite having been living this life for over three decades, Margot Kerr shared that she’s still sometimes completely surprised at their life. In 2016, she told NBA.com, “I can’t even believe all this. I don’t even know how all this happened; I really don’t. I have no idea. It is a lot of luck, but he’s really a smart guy.”
She said she never doubted his career choice and told him that if it’s what he wanted to do and could achieve it, he should pursue it. Margot Kerr explained that he didn’t really have a career picked out if the NBA didn’t work out and would have probably returned to the University of Arizona.
“He had done a year of grad school, he was going back in the summer,” she shared. “He was doing a sports administration program. He was taking summer classes and thinking of going back to grad school and being an assistant coach or grad assistant. He didn’t think he was going to play that long.”
Looking back at their life, Margot Kerr told In My Court that the couple has “a lot of fun together.” For his part, Kerr praised his wife for being his partner throughout the years and for accompanying him wholeheartedly on his journey.