Tom Coughlin reveals that his wife is afflicted with incurable brain disorder

For years, Tom and Judy Coughlin barely saw one another.

Married since 1967, Tom would serve a coaching apprenticeship that eventually blossomed into a Hall of Fame-caliber career in the NFL, which meant there wasn’t much time together with his wife.

"It is safe to say that Judy and I do not have a typical marriage," Coughlin wrote in "A Team To Believe In," his memoir of the Giants’ 2007 Super Bowl season. "Not because of how we treat each other, but because of how little we see each other. For a great part of our marriage, we have just a handful of hours, once a week, to sit with each other and talk. She runs the household, I coach football."

For the former Giants’ coach, who won two Super Bowl titles after a remarkable run with the expansion Jacksonville Jaguars, there was little thought about what Judy actually did in raising her family. "She never shared the burdens and issues taking place at home, and I guess I just assumed we were like the Brady Bunch all those years."

He came to realize that was not the case, that Judy Coughlin was the glue that held the family together and made it possible for her husband to pursue his coaching dreams.

Now it is Tom’s turn to be by Judy’s side during an achingly painful time for the Coughlin family.

"As so many of you are gearing up for another NFL season, I will be sitting far from the sidelines, at the bedside and holding the hand of my biggest supporter, my beloved wife, the mother of our children and a grandmother to our grandchildren," Coughlin wrote in a heartfelt and emotional essay published in Tuesday’s New York Times.

For the last four years, Judy has suffered from what has since been diagnosed as a rare brain disorder — progressive supranuclear palsy. It is a disease with no known cure and takes away a person’s ability to walk, speak and think.

"Our hearts are broken," Coughlin wrote. "Judy has been everything to our family … We’ve helplessly watched her go from a gracious woman with a gift for conversation, hugging all the people she met and making them feel they were the most important person in the room, to losing almost all ability to speak and move."

It is a gut-wrenching time for the family, an inconsolable period of grief watching the Coughlin matriarch slip away. If you’ve ever met Judy Coughlin — and we’ve had that distinct honor over the years — you know her as a warm, loving, caring soul, someone who lives each day with empathy and kindness.

And humor.

In an interview with Newsday in 2003, when it appeared likely Tom would soon be hired as the Giants’ head coach, Judy discussed what it was like having him around during her husband’s hiatus from the NFL between the Jacksonville and Giants jobs.

"I always say be careful what you wish for," she said. "All I wanted was for my husband to be around a little more. But someone wasn’t listening when I said, ‘little.’ I went from never having him around to 24 hours a day."

Judy remembered that Tom "always wanted to be with his family more, but he was like a fish out of water. It was hard for him to adjust to my world. He never stood in a line, never dealt with the cable people. In one sense, it was good for him to see how the rest of the world lived. But there were days when he was like having a pet. He was never any trouble, but always under foot."

Tom is now around all the time, but there’s no place he would rather be than by his wife’s side. He is the one who now holds the memories as his wife’s condition worsens, and it is Tom who binds the family together from their home in Jacksonville.

They have been amazing life partners for more than half a century, kindred spirits who formed an everlasting bond through a joyful marriage that has blossomed and expanded to help others. Tom noted in his essay that Judy no longer appeared at functions for "The Jay Fund," the charitable organization the Coughlins founded to help families dealing with cancer.

The group is named after Jay McGillis, a Boston College player Coughlin coached. McGillis was diagnosed with leukemia and died from the illness, spurring Coughlin to start his non-profit to assist more than 5,000 families and distribute close to $15 million for families of children with cancer.

"Taking care of Judy is a promise I made 54 years ago when she was crazy enough to say ‘I do,’" Coughlin wrote. "I do want the players I coached in college and in the NFL who thought all my crazy ideas about discipline, commitment and accountability ended when they left the field to know that is not the case. The truth is that is when those qualities matter most. A friend said we don’t get to choose our sunset, and that’s true, but I am so blessed to get to hold Judy’s hand through hers."

Prayers up for the Coughlin family.

By Bob Glauber

Special to NewsdayBobGlauber

Bob Glauber retired in 2022 after covering the NFL for nearly 40 years. He was selected in 2021 for the Bill Nunn Career Achievement Award by the Pro Football Writers of America, and is a three-time winner of the New York State Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sports Media Association. President of the PFWA for the 2018-20 seasons, he is the author of “The Forgotten First” and “Guts and Genius.”