Family and Alcohol Problems
While taking a voice class in 1983, Namath met Deborah Mays, an aspiring actress. He was 41 while she was 22, and they married in 1984. The couple had two children, Jessica in 1986 and Olivia in 1991, and the longtime bachelor became a family man. Namath and his wife were divorced in 2000.
On December 20, 2003, Namath gained new notoriety, apparently after partaking of too much celebratory champagne during the Jets' announcement of their all-time team. During live ESPN coverage of the Jets' game, Namath was asked about Chad Pennington and his thoughts on the struggles of that year's squad. Namath expressed confidence in Pennington, and then stated to the interviewer, Suzy Kolber, "I want to kiss you. I couldn't care less about the team strugg-a-ling." He later apologized. Several weeks later he publicly admitted to an alcohol problem and entered into an outpatient alcoholism treatment program on January 12, 2004, the 35th anniversary of Super Bowl III. Namath chronicled the episode, including his battle with alcoholism in his book, Namath.
Read more about this topic: Joe Namath
Famous quotes containing the words family, alcohol and/or problems:
“Respectable means rich, and decent means poor. I should die if I heard my family called decent.”
—Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866)
“The sacrifice to Legba was completed; the Master of the Crossroads had taken the loas’ mysterious routes back to his native Guinea.
Meanwhile, the feast continued. The peasants were forgetting their misery: dance and alcohol numbed them, carrying away their shipwrecked conscience in the unreal and shady regions where the savage madness of the African gods lay waiting.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)
“To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)