Miami Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel always knew wife Katie McDaniel was The One.
While Mike and Katie often keep their relationship private, their love story made headlines in November 2023 when broadcaster Al Michaels revealed on air how they met.
While reporting on the Dolphins’ NFL game against the New York Jets, Michaels explained that he asked Mike for a story about his time as the running backs coach for United Football League’s Sacramento Mountain Lions.
After the Mountain Lions’ blowout win in Nebraska, they hit up a nightclub to celebrate.
“One of the running backs that [Mike] coaches is dancing with a girl and Mike says, ‘Listen, you’re not dancing with her anymore or you’re not playing with this team next year,’” Michaels recalled during the NFL broadcast on Amazon Prime.
The athlete complied to save his job, just in time for Mike to swoop in and start dancing with Katie himself.
Mike and Katie were married four years later. Keep scrolling for their complete relationship timeline:
October 2010
According to Michaels, Mike was smitten with Katie from the moment he saw her in a nightclub — even though one of his team members was also interested.
June 2014
They wed four years later in South Oroville, California.
“Thank you to all of our family and friends that were able to take part in the celebration of Katie and Michael’s special day!” Katie’s mom, Kristy Hemstalk, wrote via Facebook at the time. “What an amazing wedding weekend.”
Later that year, Mike became the wide receivers coach for the Cleveland Browns after previously working with the Washington Commanders. By 2017, he moved on to the San Francisco 49ers.
2020
Amid Mike’s role as the running game coordinator for the 49ers, Katie found out she was pregnant with their first baby. Daughter Alya June was born in 2020.
February 2022
Mike was announced as the head coach for the Dolphins, and Katie and Alya stepped out at his debut press conference.
“You’re a miracle and I can’t wait to see what you grow into,” Mike gushed of his daughter.
November 2022
Mike gave Sports Illustrated insight into his home life ahead of his first bye week on the Dolphins.
“I’m a leader by example. I’m going to show these guys how to rest my butt off, and then when I’m not asleep, I’ll be daddying and husbanding,” he quipped. “I’ll have some honey-dos. I’ll do my chores, because I won’t want to be in the doghouse. I might kind of, at the end of the week, just kind of skirt some of those honey-dos, just knowing that there won’t be ramifications because I’ll be back at work. But until then, I’m all right.”
Earlier that month, Mike sported custom sneakers while attending a Dolphins game. The kicks had a painted portrait of Mike and his daughter on the side.
January 2023
Katie and Alya watched the Dolphins’ home game against the Jets from the sidelines. A 3-year-old Alya adorably sported a denim jacket with their last name on the back.
November 2023
After Michaels regaled NFL viewers with the story of Mike and Katie’s first meeting, the coach cleared up what really went down.
“First of all, the perceived threat that I made to a player was over-the-top [and] a joke considering both he and I knew that, as a running back coach, I had no ability to say if he was [cut from the team] or not,” Mike quipped during a Dolphins press conference. “It was more in jest. And second of all … the dude had met her for 45 seconds. I feel like I was painted out to be kind of a d-bag and it wasn’t like that at all. It was all niceties.”
