Getty San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan reacts after a play in an NFL game.
Long before they were at the 2024 Super Bowl together, San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan and wife Mandy Shanahan were brought together by football.
The pair started dating in high school in the late 1990s in Colorado, where Kyle was growing up as his dad, Mike Shanahan, was head coach of the Denver Broncos. The pair dated on and off until reconnecting in college over a family tragedy, and married in 2005.
Mandy Shanahan has been one of her husband’s biggest supporters and one of the team’s most vocal fans, leading her to Las Vegas for the team’s showdown with the Kansas City Chiefs on February 11.
Who Is Kyle Shanahan’s Wife? All About Mandy Shanahan
Kyle and Mandy Shanahan Endured Struggles in Early Life
The couple went their separate ways after high school, with Kyle heading to the University of Texas where he was a walk-on receiver on the football team. Though he and Mandy stopped dating, they reconnected again when her mother was diagnosed with Stage 4 gallbladder cancer, People reported.
Kyle wrote to Mandy’s mother and flew back to Colorado on weekends to support her, and the two ended up getting back together. Kyle said seeing the way Mandy cared for her mother made him fall in love with her.
“There are very few times in life you get to see someone for who they genuinely are,” Kyle said in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle in 2017. “Mandy going through that — it was as bad as anything you could go through — it showed me who she was. There was no B.S. to her. I saw who she was. And that was the person I fell in love with.”
Kyle and Mandy Shanahan were married in 2005 and moved around the country as Kyle made his way up the NFL coaching ladder, adding to their family along the way. They had a daughter Stella, born in 2007 while Kyle was quarterbacks coach of the Houston Texans. Their son Carter was born the following year, when Kyle had been promoted to offensive coordinator in Houston. Their last child, daughter Lexi, was born in 2012 when Kyle was offensive coordinator in Washington.
Couple Endured Ups and Downs
Kyle and Mandy Shanahan had been through a lot together, from frequent moves to the uncertainty of a COVID season that sent him away. As The Athletic’s Tim Kawakami noted, the 49ers were forced to leave San Francisco late in the 2020 season when Santa Clara county banned contact sports.
The team relocated to Arizona and had to remain there for five weeks, with Mandy and Kyle separated for his 41st birthday.
But 49ers general manager John Lynch said Mandy made sure her husband got the celebration he deserved, even if she couldn’t be there and the team had to adhere to strict social distancing guidelines.
“I probably shouldn’t tell this, get myself in trouble,” Lynch told The Athletic. “But I remember Mandy Shanahan calling me and saying in tears (that) she’s missing her husband, it was his birthday and ‘I know you guys aren’t supposed to gather, but it’s Kyle’s birthday. If we got him a cake, could you get some people together?’
“And I kind of had my ‘screw-it’ moment and just had everybody up to my suite and just say, ‘Hey, we can at least sing happy birthday to our coach.’ We ended up hanging out. Doors open, windows open, six feet away.”