“The time is right to step down from my position as the head football coach at the University of Utah. It’s been an honor and a privilege to lead the program for the past 21 years and I’m very grateful for the relationships forged with all the players and assistant coaches that have worked so hard and proudly worn the drum and feather during our time here,” he said in a statement.
Whittingham has been head coach since December 2004 and has been a Utes’ coaching staff member since 1994. Given the many years he’s spent with the team, there is a lot of interest on who Whittingham is and who his family members are amid news of the head coach stepping down from his role.
All about Kyle Whittingham’s wife, Jamie
Kyle Whittingham is married to wife Jamie. The two got married in 1983 and have been together for over 40 years now. She’s been described as camera-shy in a Deseret Morning News profile.
Jamie there had shared that their family loved to go boating in the summer and family outings included things from bike rides around the neighborhood to pickup baseball games in the park, to Costco shopping expeditions.
“I haven’t done anything personally. I’m just supportive of Kyle,” she told the publication in 2005, soon after her husband became HC.
Jamie grew up as the middle child of five kids in Provo. Her father was a BYU professor and she loved animals, and riding her horse. She’d ski in winter and water-ski in summer, as per the publication.
Jamie and Kyle met when they were 14 and in eighth grade at Farrer Junior High School. Kyle and his family had just moved to California at the time. They lived four doors away and their birthdays were twenty days apart. The two formed a solid friendship and then dated when attending Provo High. They tied the knot after Jamie graduated from nursing school and Kyle was playing in the USFL. They’d waited because Kyle didn’t want to get married until he was through with college.
Who are Kyle and Jamie’s children?
Alex is continuing the family tradition and is now assistant defensive line coach for the Kansas City Chiefs. Tyler, a defensive back from 2010-11, played under him in Utes.
Melissa, his daughter, had told The Salt Lake Tribune “Football was literally our life,” adding, “All of us planned our weddings around the football season and the bye week to make sure Dad can come. With our kids, which are his grandkids, on their birthday parties, it’s like ‘OK check with Dad when he gets time off’.”
Kyle was reportedly mulling retirement as per this 2024 report, and it noted that Melissa would have been happy about it. “To be honest, I’m always like ‘Dad, you can retire this time. I wouldn’t mind having more of my dad around,” she told the publication.
Meanwhile, Kylie, their youngest, became a cheerleader in college after having started in sixth grade. Kyle had even jokingly cautioned players not to pull any moves with his daughter when she joined the team, as per The Utah Chronicle.
Speaking of his own plans to retire, Kyle had told The Salt Lake Tribune last year “I have 10 grandkids and probably more to come and the oldest one is 8 years old. I missed a great deal of my own kids’ lives because of this job, and I don’t want to repeat it with the grandkids. I want to be in their lives and be part of it. I’m not that old, but I’m 64, and I’ll be turning 65 toward the end of this season, so it’s time to start thinking along those lines.”
