Bianchi: 60 years later, Steve and Jerri Spurrier are the greatest Gator love story ever told

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Anybody who knows Jerri Spurrier knows this about her:

She’s a hugger.

Not one of those polite, obligatory huggers who leans in, pats you twice on the back and quickly retreats. Jerri hugs you like she means it. She wraps both arms around you, squeezes hard and holds on just long enough to make you feel as if, at that particular moment, you are somebody who matters to her.

I don’t know for sure, but I’ll bet that hug is what hooked Steve Spurrier.

All these decades later, as they celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary earlier this week, maybe the remarkable thing isn’t that Jerri is still hugging him.

It’s that through all the victories and defeats, all the trophies and championships, all the stops and starts of a football life, neither one has ever let go.

This is a Gator love story for the ages; one that began long before the awards and championships and turned out to be worth more than all of them.

The Heisman Trophy winner and the Heisman Trophy winner’s wife.

The Head Ball Coach and the Head Ball Coach’s wife.

The legendary coach with the legendary ego and the legendary coach’s wife without one.

Steve loved being a coach.

Jerri loved being a coach’s wife just as much.

And through six decades, four children, 14 grandchildren, thousands of football players, countless victories, painful defeats and a coaching odyssey that took them all over the football map, they have remained what they were before the Heisman Trophy, before the SEC and national championships and before Steve Spurrier became Steve Spurrier:

Steve and Jerri.

They met as sophomores in a biology class at UF, when Steve was already becoming a campus football star but apparently wasn’t quite impressive enough to overwhelm Jerri Starr. The two dated, but not exclusively. In fact, the old stories suggest each considered the other something of a challenge.

“The football part, I wasn’t one of those people who was impressed with all that,” Jerri told The Lakeland Ledger in 1996. “But he was a challenge. It was fun. He still is a challenge.”

By Steve’s senior year, the challenge had become love.

So, naturally, Steve drew up a game plan.

They would elope.

One the morning of Sept. 14, 1966, Steve, Jerri and a few friends piled into a car headed for Georgia — a state where there was no 10-day waiting period to get married like there was in Florida. The original destination was Folkston, but they got turned around and ended up in Kingsland. Steve even got a speeding ticket on the way and, according to friend Fred Goldsmith’s recollection of the trip years later, apparently discovered that being a star quarterback at Florida carried considerably less influence with a small-town Georgia lawman than he anticipated.

Somewhere amid the mad dash, Steve bought Jerri a little gold wedding ring for about $20 at a bait-and-tackle shop.

No cathedral.

No orchestra.

No elaborate reception.

Just Steve, Jerri, a $20 ring and a lifetime ahead of them.

They hurried back toward Gainesville because Steve had football practice. Steve snuck out of his dorm room after curfew and their makeshift honeymoon that night was at the Tom Sawyer Motor Inn on U.S. 441 outside Gainesville. Their room even had its own telephone — a luxury in those days.

The following Saturday, the Gators lit up the scoreboard with a 43-7 season-opening victory over Northwestern, and Spurrier recalls now with a chuckle: “I married the love of my life and I was named Sports Illustrated’s Back of the Week. I guess it was a pretty good week for me!”

And that’s how it all started. Sixty years ago, they began a marriage without much ceremony and somehow built one worthy of celebration. A couple of weeks ago, dozens upon dozens of former players, family members and friends gathered at Spurrier’s restaurant in Gainesville to celebrate them. In many ways, the room represented their life together.

Steve coached the teams.

Jerri helped make them families.

“She never wanted to sit up in the luxury suite with all of the boosters and bigwigs,” Steve says. “She loved going to the games and sitting in the stands with all of the other coaches’ wives and all of the kids of the coaches. She is the greatest head coach’s wife ever.”

She baked cookies for players on their birthdays. She organized gatherings for assistant coaches and their wives. She became a mother to four children and a team mom to thousands more.

And she provided balance for a husband whose confidence was both part of his charm and one of the ingredients that made him great.

The late Bill Carr, Steve’s former roommate and an All-American center at UF, understood Jerri’s importance. While Gainesville saw an All-American and future Heisman winner, Jerri still saw just Steve. Carr told The Lakeland Ledger in 1996 that she became his “true partner” during his earliest brush with celebrity and called her “the single best thing that ever happened to him.”

There were bigger stadiums to come. Championships. The Tampa Bay Bandits. Duke. Florida. The NFL. South Carolina. More trophies than anybody could reasonably count.

And everywhere Steve went, Jerri followed. She didn’t merely tolerate the peculiar existence of a coach’s wife. She embraced it. She needed it.

When Steve briefly returned to coaching with the Orlando Apollos of the Alliance of American Football a few years ago, Jerri once confided something to me that explained almost everything about her.

“I think I missed having a team more than he did.”

Of course she did.

The players were Steve’s players, but they were Jerri’s boys.

The coaches were Steve’s staff, but their wives were Jerri’s best friends.

Football was Steve’s profession, but it was Jerri’s passion, too.

Earlier this week, Steve marked their 60th anniversary by writing on Facebook that their six decades had been filled with “love, memories, laughter, and life together,” calling Jerri his greatest supporter and saying how blessed he felt to have shared the journey with her.

And when I asked Steve recently to choose between the two monumental events of 1966 — winning the Heisman Trophy or marrying Jerri — that had the biggest impact on his life, the HBC didn’t need a replay review.

“The Heisman is just a trophy,” he said. “Jerri is the treasure of my life.”

Then he said something even more revealing:

“Jerri has made me a better coach, a better father and a better man.”

Sixty years ago, Steve Spurrier walked into a little church in Kingsland, Georgia, and put a $20 gold ring on Jerri Starr’s finger.

A few months later, somebody handed him a much more famous piece of hardware. One became one of the most coveted trophies in sports. The other became the symbol of something infinitely more valuable.

One was a Heisman Trophy.

The other was a little gold wedding ring that cost 20 bucks.

One would come to symbolize a legendary football career.

The other would come to symbolize a legendary life.

The Heisman has been sitting on a shelf for all these years.

Jerri has been standing by his side.

Steve Spurrier has always known which one was the real prize.

His greatest victory was never a trophy or a championship.

It’s always been Jerri.

Here we are six 60 years later, and this amazing woman who has spent a lifetime hugging everybody else is still holding Steve tighter than ever.

Email me at mbianchi@orlandosentinel.com. Hit me up on social media @BianchiWrites and listen to my radio show “Game On” every weekday from 3 to 6 p.m. on FM 96.9, AM 740 and 969TheGame.com/listen.

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