Football family! Matthew Stafford has his hands full with four adorable daughters at home.
The NFL player wed wife Kelly Stafford (née Hall), whom he met while they were attending the University of Georgia, in April 2015. One year after the pair’s Georgia nuptials, the couple began growing their family.
Twins Chandler and Sawyer arrived in April 2016, followed by Hunter and Tyler in August 2018 and July 2020, respectively. Kelly wrote via Instagram when their youngest arrived that their family was “complete.”
Between the births of Hunter and Tyler, the former cheerleader had surgery to remove a brain tumor after being diagnosed with acoustic neuroma. This condition is characterized by noncancerous, slow-growing tumors along the branches of the eighth cranial nerve.
“There was a 50 percent chance I would lose my hearing. There was a chance I’d lose facial function,” the Georgia native wrote of the surgery in an October 2019 ESPN essay. “It was all really scary. … It wasn’t easy after. I needed to relearn how to walk.”
Kelly praised her “incredible” husband at the time, writing, “He was literally by my side at every step. I had exercises I needed to do — some of them were seemingly simple, like shaking my head left and right — and Matthew helped me through all of it.”
She concluded by assuring fans that she felt “pretty good,” adding, “Days are longer. Some days are hard — some mornings I wake up a little foggy, and know I have to take the day a little slower. It’s rarer for me to get dizzy. Background noise can be tough (but also good — sometimes I don’t hear what I don’t want to hear). … The doctors said it would take about a year for me to feel symptom-free and have the same energy I had before.”
One year later, Kelly reflected on her procedure via Instagram, writing that she would “never be the same.”
She explained, “I have symptoms that are still lingering. In fact, they aren’t symptoms anymore. They are just a part of me. But every time I get those headaches, lose my footing or get yelled at by my girls for not listening when I really never heard them, I remind myself how much stronger I am. How much stronger my marriage is. How much stronger my family is. It was a part of God’s plan, a plan I am all in for. Grateful to be here.”
Keep scrolling to see Kelly and Matthew’s best moments over the years with twins Chandler, Sawyer, Hunter and Tyler, from Halloween costumes to winter vacations.
