Melissa Stark is one of two sideline reporters for NBC’s broadcast of Super Bowl LX between the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots at Levi’s Stadium on February 8, 2026. She shares sideline duties with Kaylee Hartung alongside play-by-play announcer Mike Tirico and analyst Cris Collinsworth.
It marks her second Super Bowl, an unprecedented 23 years after her first such assignment at Super Bowl XXXVII with ABC in January 2003, according to her NBC Sports bio.
Stark, 52, has been the sideline reporter for NBC’s Sunday Night Football since April 2022. The show averaged a Total Audience Delivery of 23.5 million viewers in 2025, its best viewership in 20 seasons, per NBC Sports.
But the road to this moment was anything but linear. Stark walked away from sideline reporting at the height of her career to raise four children, spent nearly two decades off the NFL sidelines, and returned at age 48 to reclaim the job she once thought she’d lost forever.
“Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine my life would come full circle this way,” Stark told the Associated Press.
Here’s what you need to know about her family and husband:
1. Melissa Stark’s Late Father, Dr. Walter Stark, Was a Legendary Johns Hopkins Eye Surgeon Who Operated on Supreme Court Justices & Introduced Melissa to the NFL
Melissa Zoey Stark was born on November 11, 1973, in Baltimore, Maryland. Her father, Dr. Walter Jackson Stark, was one of the most renowned ophthalmologists in the world. He served as professor of ophthalmology at Johns Hopkins University and director of the Corneal and Cataract Services at the Wilmer Eye Institute for more than four decades, according to the Baltimore Sun.
Dr. Stark’s patient list read like something out of a Washington power broker’s Rolodex: six Supreme Court justices, O.J. Simpson, Saudi princes and numerous professional athletes, per the Baltimore Sun.
He was also the team eye doctor for the Baltimore Colts. Former Colts quarterback Bert Jones, the 1976 NFL MVP, told the Sun: “Walter examined me in my rookie year. We became great friends and often went goose hunting on the Eastern Shore.”
Those Colts connections are what planted the seed that would become Melissa’s career. “He would take us to the Baltimore Colts games and I would go with him to the locker room at halftime when he checked the players’ eyes,” Melissa told the Baltimore Sun. “He was my introduction to the NFL.”
Dr. Stark was born on August 21, 1942, in Oklahoma City to Walter Jackson Stark Sr., a banker who later became administrator of the Dean McGee Eye Institute, and Lucy Anderson Stark. After his mother’s death, he was raised by Mary Lou Moorman. He was a state champion swimmer at Harding High School, then graduated from the University of Oklahoma School of Medicine in 1967 before completing his internship at Duke University Hospital and his residency and fellowship at Wilmer, according to the Cape Gazette.
He married his high school sweetheart, Polly Allen, whom he met at the Split-T, an Oklahoma City restaurant. Polly worked as a teacher, antiques dealer and real estate agent, per the Baltimore Sun.
Dr. Stark’s accomplishments were staggering. He published more than 400 articles in peer-reviewed journals, authored five textbooks, received a special citation from the FDA Commissioner, founded the Medical Eye Bank of Maryland (now KeraLink International), chaired the FDA’s ophthalmic device panel, and held both the Dr. Walter J. Stark Chair in Ophthalmology and the Boone Pickens Professorship at Johns Hopkins, per Ophthalmology Times.
In 2004, the Walter J. Stark, M.D., and Margaret C. Mosher Center for Cataract and Corneal Diseases was dedicated in his honor at Wilmer, funded by a donation from his longtime friend and former patient. He received the American Academy of Ophthalmology’s Life Achievement Award in 2015, the same year he retired, per Ophthalmology Times.
Dr. Stark died on February 29, 2024, of Parkinson’s disease complications at Sarasota Memorial Hospital in Florida. He was 81.
“My dad squeezed 10 lifetimes into one,” Melissa told the Baltimore Sun. “He never left the state of Oklahoma until he was 18 and then he went on to travel and change lives around the world. People would come up to us all the time with stories of how he restored their gift of sight.”
2. Melissa Stark Has a Sister Who’s a Doctor & a Brother in the Ophthalmic Device Business
Melissa Stark is one of three children born to Walter and Polly Stark. Her older sister, Dr. Heather Stark, is an internist and public health physician based in Gainesville, Florida. Her brother, Walter J. “Jay” Stark III, owns an ophthalmic device consulting firm in Fort Worth, Texas, following directly in their father’s professional footprint, according to the Baltimore Sun’s obituary for Dr. Stark.
While Heather went into direct patient care and Jay went into the business side of eye care, Melissa was the one who broke from the family’s medical tradition. She attended Roland Park Country School, a prestigious all-girls preparatory school in Baltimore, where she was class valedictorian.
She then enrolled at the University of Virginia, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1995 with a double major in Foreign Affairs and Spanish. She was a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority.
Even before graduating, Stark was already building her journalism career. She began covering UVA football and basketball for a program that aired in the state’s major TV markets while still a student. Her first professional job came as a news intern at WMAR-TV in Baltimore in 1991. She then interned at the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather in 1993 and 1994, and worked as a production assistant for Virginia Sports Marketing.
In 1996, she joined ESPN, where she hosted the weekly program Scholastic Sports America, traveling the country to cover high school and college sports. She worked on SportsCenter, NFL Countdown and Outside the Lines, and covered the World Series, NBA Finals, Final Four and Stanley Cup Finals, per her NBC Sports bio.
3. Melissa Stark Married Her Husband Mike Lilley in 2001; He Founded a New Jersey Government Transparency Nonprofit & Championed Her Comeback
Melissa married Mike Lilley on May 26, 2001, per IMDb. The couple met in the early 1990s, before Stark’s national television fame, and connected over shared interests in sports, current affairs and what one profile described as “meaningful conversations,” per the Sporting News. Their wedding was small and private, attended by close family and friends. The couple lives in Rumson, New Jersey.
Lilley has a background in finance and has carved out an entirely separate public profile from his wife’s broadcasting career. He is the founder and president of the Sunlight Policy Center of New Jersey, a nonprofit organization focused on government transparency and accountability that he launched in 2019.
The organization’s primary focus has been researching the political influence of the New Jersey Education Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union, per the Sunlight Policy Center’s website. Previously, Lilley served as executive director of Better Education for New Jersey Kids, a nonprofit focused on education reform, and as an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, per Discourse Magazine.
What’s clear from multiple interviews is that Lilley played a pivotal behind-the-scenes role in Stark’s decision to return to NFL sidelines after nearly 20 years away. When NBC came calling in 2022, Stark had spent years telling her husband she’d never get another shot.
“I’ve always said to my husband, ‘I’m going to be replaced by someone younger,'” Stark told the Associated Press in 2022. “And he’s always said, ‘Stop thinking that. No, you’re not.’ To be able to come back with a family is very validating and an important message for women,” per TV News Check.
Stark told PEOPLE that her husband and “one kid” will be at Levi’s Stadium to support her during Super Bowl LX, per PEOPLE via Yahoo Sports.
4. Melissa Stark Has 4 Children, All Now in College, & She Left Her Career at Its Peak to Raise Them
Melissa Stark and Mike Lilley have four children: sons Michael “Mikey” Lilley Jr. (born August 23, 2003) and Jackson, and twin daughters Clara and Clementine “Clemmie” (born in 2007), per the Sporting News via Yahoo Sports.
In August 2025, Stark posted an emotional announcement on social media revealing that all four children had left for college, officially making her and Mike empty nesters.
“It’s been a bittersweet few weeks. All 4 now headed off in a different direction. Go make your mark, learn a lot, be kind and CALL YOUR MOM! It’s already too quiet around here,” she wrote, per The Spun. She included the hashtags #wareagle, #gobison, #gohoos and #gocard, revealing which schools each child attends, per her Threads account.
Michael Jr. is the one attending UVA, his mother’s alma mater. He is a fourth-year student in the McIntire School of Commerce and is set to graduate this spring, according to Streaking the Lawn via Yahoo Sports. The UVA story noted that the “symmetry” of the moment was not lost on Stark: the son who was unknowingly with her during her first Super Bowl in 2003, when she was pregnant with him on the sideline, is now preparing to graduate from her own university as she returns to the Super Bowl 23 years later.
Clara and Clemmie graduated from high school together in the class of 2025. Stark posted: “A double celebration! Congratulations Clara and Clemmie and to the class of 2025. It was incredibly special to be surrounded by so much family and friends (who have become family.) We will miss you girls more than you know, but are so excited to watch you grow and make your mark on this world!” per her Threads account.
The decision to step away from the NFL sidelines in the first place was driven entirely by her growing family. After three seasons as the Monday Night Football sideline reporter alongside John Madden and Al Michaels, Stark left ABC after the 2002 season while pregnant with Mikey. She moved to NBC News as a Today Show national correspondent and MSNBC anchor, and covered three Olympics (Athens 2004, Torino 2006, Beijing 2008).
But as her family grew to four children, including the twins, she pulled back significantly, per Yahoo Sports.
“Four kids under four was a lot,” Stark told PEOPLE. “So I basically said, ‘I’m going to leave the career, I’ll leave this profession to be with my family to be a full-time mom.’ And I never really knew at that time if I’d get back,” per Hollywood Life.
She kept a toehold in the business by joining the NFL Network in 2011, hosting its Emmy Award-winning series NFL 360 and contributing to draft coverage and overseas games, per her NBC Sports bio. But it wasn’t until April 2022, when she replaced Michele Tafoya as the Sunday Night Football sideline reporter, that she was truly back.
As for the practical challenges of returning to weekly travel with teenagers at home, Stark has kept it real. “My daughter said, ‘Mom, I don’t know how to use the washing machine,'” she told the Chicago Sun-Times. “I had to FaceTime them before the Cowboys game to show them how to do it. So they’re learning. I think it’s good for them if I’m not doing everything for them,” per Hollywood Life.
5. Super Bowl LX Brings Everything Full Circle, 23 Years After Her First Super Bowl When She Was Pregnant & 29 Years Old
On January 26, 2003, Stark stood on the sideline at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego for Super Bowl XXXVII as ABC’s Monday Night Football sideline reporter. She was 29 years old and pregnant with her first child. She was one of the few women working the NFL sidelines at the time.
“Being one of the first women in sports during my first Super Bowl, it was an anomaly at the time,” Stark told Streaking the Lawn. “Now it’s much more commonplace. There are so many more opportunities for women, in any avenue they want to pursue, and that is expected,” per Streaking the Lawn via Yahoo Sports.
Now 52, she returns to the Super Bowl sideline as a fundamentally different person. “When I was younger, I questioned a lot,” she told PEOPLE. This time around, Stark said she has a “much better perspective” on her career and “how once-in-a-lifetime it is to be able to” be in her position. “I think that perspective and the awe of it all will set in for sure. I’m a lot more grounded in who I am as a person,” per PEOPLE via Yahoo Sports.
Her fellow sideline reporter, Kaylee Hartung, has spoken publicly about what it means to work alongside Stark. “She was, in their minds, the sideline reporter to aspire to be, as she was in my mind,” Hartung told the Mirror. “I remember pulling up to the stadium in Detroit the first time I worked a divisional playoff for NBC a couple of years ago. I texted one of my best guy friends growing up and said, ‘I am in tears. Pulling up to my first playoff game with NBC, and I am sitting next to Melissa Stark. I never could have imagined this if you guys hadn’t put it in my head all those years ago,'” per the Mirror.
And then there was the time a football found the back of her head. In October 2018, while she was with the NFL Network giving a pregame report before the Chargers-Titans game in London, an errant throw smacked her below her ponytail on live television. She didn’t miss a beat. “Oh, OK, nothing like live television. I’m OK,” she said, then continued her report. She later tweeted: “Hurts more every time I watch it. Literally NEVER happened in 20 years covering NFL. London, I’ll never forget you!! In case you’re wondering, I’m already off the injury report,” per TIME.
“It’s all come full circle, which is really fun for me,” she told PEOPLE.
Melissa Stark’s Husband & Family: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know