Matthew Stafford’s Mom Recalls Honest First Impression of Kelly Stafford

Matthew Stafford with family.

Matthew Stafford’s mother, Margaret, reflected on the moment she met her future daughter-in-law, Kelly, for the first time. 

“I remember it was after the awards banquet, I think,” Margaret said on the Thursday, November 7 episode of Kelly Stafford’s “The Morning After” podcast. “You were at the bar. She was adorable.”

The big introduction was made while Kelly and Matthew were both students at the University of Georgia — Matthew was a star quarterback and Kelly was on the cheerleading squad. 

Margaret recalled Kelly being “tomboyish, but fun,” and knew meeting Matthew’s girlfriend was a big deal. 

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“I knew you all had been dating and it was like, ‘I want you to meet Kelly,’” Margaret remembered her son telling her. “I knew that he was interested in her and liked her a lot. I just hadn’t met her.”

Margaret was cool, calm and collected about the meeting, but the same couldn’t be said about Kelly. 

“I was terrified,” Kelly told her. “You are such a presence when you walk in the room. You’ve got this big, Texas hair. Here I am, I was like, ‘Oh, man.’”

Kelly acknowledged that the state of her relationship with Matthew at the time made things a bit unpredictable. “In this moment, yes we were dating,” she said, “but I didn’t know what our future held.”

She added, “I told my parents, ‘I just don’t know, I don’t know if she liked me.’”

Luckily, Margaret did, which came in handy when Kelly and Matthew got married in 2015, seven years after Matthew left the University of Georgia for a career in the NFL. 

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Since then, Kelly and the Los Angeles Rams quarterback have welcomed four daughters: twins Sawyer and Chandler, 7, Hunter, 6 and Tyler, 4. 

When asked about her son’s marriage to Kelly, Margaret couldn’t help but gush about the supportive bond the pair have managed to cultivate.

“I think you all work together well,” Margaret said. “You see couples where it’s like, ‘Oh, he doesn’t do that or she doesn’t do this.’ I think you all really work together well for the girls. It’s a team, it really is.”

Margaret added, “There’s the love there. It’s like, ‘OK, this is our love for each other and then for the girls.’ Together, that’s what’s so great about you two. You can really tell that you work together and you support each other.”