Jan Thatcher met Karl Kassulke in 1962 at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, where he was a football hero about to enter the world of professional football.
In Football Wife, she chronicles the joys and privileges of the elite celebrity life, while also revealing the dark
side to such privilege. While Karl succeeded with the Minnesota Vikings, Jan worked, attended university and medical school, and gave birth to two sons. Theirs was a loving union with plenty
of fun and laughter, but the consequences of alcohol, drugs, celebrity, groupies, and repeated head injury began to erode the marriage. Eventually the challenges and issues of celebrity could
not be resolved, and after nine years they were divorced. How all of this affected their paths is unique and in a way defines a generation.
Told from Jan’s perspective, Football Wife is set in a time when America was rapidly changing from conservative to
free-wheeling, from closet alcoholism to an awakening to the consequences of alcohol abuse, while the sexual, racial, and women’s revolutions were raging. A true story told with love and
compassion, its cautionary message offers hope to anyone struggling with destructive issues in their relationships.
