Kelly Staffordis throwing the flag on her husband Matthew Stafford.
A decade into their marriage, the Morning After podcast host cornered the Los Angeles Rams quarterback to ask him why he forgoes his wedding ring during football games when other NFL players now opt for a rubber ring during play.
“Why haven’t you?” Kelly asked Matthew on the Sept. 18 episode of her podcast. Following a pause and a laugh, she added, “I’m kidding, I’m totally kidding. I’m putting you on the spot. I respect the fact that you don’t have to.”
Plus, the 36-year-old said she is “one to talk,” since her and the athlete’s four daughters—twins Sawyer and Chandler, 8, Hunter, 7, and Tyler, 5—give her a reason to not wear her wedding band, either.
“Sometimes my ring stays upstairs,” Kelly continued. “We have kids. It’s a lot just keeping track of everything.”
And since Matthew, 37, is often taking his ring off for his football games, his wife finds it “really impressive” he hasn’t fumbled the location of it more often.
“I will give you credit,” she told him, “you’ve only lost that ring once.”
But Matthew was quick to remind her that he had only “misplaced” the ring in a jewelry bag in her purse.
Still, Kelly is grateful for their life together.
“I am very, very blessed to have an incredible husband who supports me nonstop,” she said on the Sunday Sports Club podcast last month. “And very blessed—which everyone will point out—financially, to be able to do certain things and afford certain luxuries in this life.”
Despite their comforts, though, Kelly noted the couple’s approach to parenting.
“I’m like, ‘You’re not going to grow up spoiled rotten brats. I won’t raise that. I can’t do that,’” she continued. “My husband didn’t grow up in this type of situation either, so raising kids with it is a learning process, and we learn as we go.”
Read on to learn more about Kelly and Matthew’s marriage, including how they have weathered rumors over the years.
When the Matthew Stafford Trade Rumors Look Legit
In November 2024, Kelly Stafford admitted she started “spiraling” after seeing on Instagram that her husband Matthew Stafford was being traded from the Los Angeles Rams to the Minnesota Vikings.
Her first instinct was to text Matt right away, “like, ‘What’s happening?'” she shared on an episode of her podcast The Morning After With Kelly & Hank. “And that’s one thing you don’t want to text your husband. ‘Hey, have you heard you’re getting traded?’”
She ultimately deemed such a message “inappropriate” unless he brought it up, figuring the athlete would have seen the rumors himself.
Having already packed up their life to move to L.A. in 2021 after spending the first 12 seasons of Matt’s career in Detroit, their daughters would be “devastated” if they had to relocate, Kelly said. But, she added, “I’ve always told myself I will never separate our family, because it’s not fair to anyone. It’s not fair to him to not be able to see his girls; it’s not fair to the girls to not see their Dad. I would lose my mind without him.”
Dealing With Retirement Speculation
While Kelly reiterated on a Morning After episode in February 2025 that trade rumors could be really distressing, constant speculation about whether her husband was retiring or not was also quite annoying. And she insinuated that the Rams could do a better job shutting all that down.
“There has to be a slight feeling of being valued or respected,” she explained. “I feel like I have to be the dog in this situation. I want the respect for him that he deserves…I was just going to slide past it, but it has been upsetting me.”
Matt, generally not one to complain, confessed on a March 2025 episode of New Heights that “there were some trade rumors that [were] a little bit tough on the family, because you don’t know what’s going to be next.”
On Whether Matthew Stafford Was Having Trouble Connecting With His Teammates
Kelly acknowledged she may have taken the ball and run with it when she noted on her podcast in August 2023 that a lot of Matthew’s teammates were of a different generation, one that’s much more attached to their phones and social media.
Cue the headlines about her saying that Matt wasn’t connecting with his fellow Rams.
“I think those guys understand where I’m coming from,” Matthew said about a week later, per ESPN, making a rare comment about a rumor. “They see me come in this building every single day and know how I go to work, know how I interact with everybody and we didn’t really think too much about it to be honest with you.”
Recalling the controversy on the Him & Her podcast in January 2025, Kelly said, “They manipulated it, which they always do. But everyone just reads headlines.”
When the Kids Hear That Mom Is Difficult
Kelly isn’t the first wife or girlfriend of an athlete to find herself the subject of chatter that, hi, she’s the problem, it’s her.
But she was pretty perturbed when the latest off-season trade rumor about their dad—this time costarring their mother—made it all the way to her daughters.
“The kids at school were picking on them, like, ‘You’re gonna have to move because your mom is an issue,’ like, ‘she’s too loud’ and whatever,” Kelly shared on an August 2025 episode of Sunday Sports Club. “My girls came home and they’re like, ‘Mommy, are we having to move because of you?’ I was like, ‘Because of me?’ I was, like, ‘What the f–k?’ It wasn’t the Rams!”
Sacking a Rumor Kelly Had Cancer
Following surgery to remove a brain tumor in 2019, Kelly takes health matters seriously. So she did not appreciate speculation that she had cancer after she talked about having stomach pain.
“There is a bunch circulating right now and want to reiterate that I DO NOT HAVE CANCER,” Kelly wrote on Instagram in July 2023. “If journalists actually took time to check facts these days, they would know this. I’m infuriated. Most the time I wouldn’t care what people wrote because it didn’t matter.”
But, she explained, “This matters because it takes away from the people who are fighting this horrible disease, fighting to live another day, fighting to be there with the ones they love, fighting 24/7.”
Her Daughters’ Health Scare
Guessing that inquiring minds would want to know, Kelly shared in January 2025 that the twins required a trip to an Arizona hospital while they were in town for a playoff game—and later clarified the real reason for the visit.
“The flu is the flu, but it had turned into more than that,” Kelly told E! News a few weeks later once her girls were on the mend. “There were other infections occurring that I was unaware of.” She acknowledged coming down with “mom guilt” in the meantime.
So, she advised, “If your kid has the flu, just make sure you stay on top of it.”
When Your Husband Might Be a Clone
Kelly at least knew her husband was alive and only absent from Rams practice because he was recovering from a back injury. So, she was happy to have fun with that tall tale in August 2025.
“I knew there was something different about him,” she wrote on her Instagram Story, sharing the comprehensive Barstool Sports headline, “The Best NFL Conspiracy Theory On The Internet – Matthew Stafford Died A Couple Weeks Ago, Got Cloned, New One Is Now QB1 for the Rams.”
On Reining It In for Her Kids
“I’m very real and vulnerable on my podcast,” Kelly said on Him & Her, “and I’m OK with that, but I do feel like sometimes it gets to the point where maybe my daughters, when they grow up, they’re like, ‘I don’t want this following me.’ So I’ve stopped using names. But stories, it’s hard, because being a parent is talking about maybe the best and worst parts of your day with your child. And that’s a lot about what my podcast is, so it’s hard to take them completely out of it.”
