Happy 45^th wedding anniversary to Nick Saban and Terry Constable Saban!

They were married December 18, 1971. They have two children, Nicholas and Kristen and a granddaughter, Amelie.

Nick’s sister, Dianna “Dene” Saban Thompson, Class of 1968, a Monongah Elementary teacher who lives in Hutchinson with husband Leroy, gave him the nickname of “Brother” that sticks to this day with those who knew Brother from his Carolina days.

The Sabans have contributed or helped raises millions of dollars for tornado relief, organizations throughout Alabama and Habitat for Humanity.

Brother is the #1 college football coach in America and will be seeking his 6^th national title in the playoffs, which would tie him with Alabama great Paul “Bear” Bryant for the most in history.

 

Brother was a graduate assistant at Kent State, then an assistant coach at Syracuse, West Virginia, Ohio State and Navy and also was with the Houston Oilers and Cleveland Browns in the National Football League.

His first head coaching job was at Toledo in 1990 season, then Michigan State in 1995 and LSU in 1999 before beginning at Alabama.

The pride of Carolina and Monongah High, where he quarterbacked the Lions to the 1968 state championship, is a son of Nick Lou Saban, Sr. – sponsor and coach of the legendary Black Diamonds Pop Warner youth football team -- and Mary Saban.

The Tusaloosa Alabama News article about Brother and Miss Terry’s 45^th wedding anniversary:

‘Miss Terry’ looks back at 45 years of marriage with Nick Saban

 

By Rachel Baribeau, Tusaloosa News

 

As we approach the end of another football season, it’s easy to become nostalgic.

“Where did the time go,” I often hear repeated.

For two people in particular, one you are very familiar with and one perhaps not as much, the end of another football season marks a powerful anniversary. On Sunday, Dec. 18 Nick and Terry Saban celebrated 45 years of marriage.

But their love story began long before that.

I talked to Terry Saban this week about her life with one of the most famous coaches to ever grace the game – her husband.

“Perhaps it was foreshadowing of things to come, but I first saw Nick in fifth grade at a Pop Warner meeting of the Black Diamonds, where he was the quarterback, and the East Side Rockets,” Terry Saban told Gridiron Now. “I was wearing my Rocket cheerleading skirt when I saw him jogging across the field towards me. Like a bird, preening its feathers to attract a male, quickly I did my best cartwheel right in front of him, he jogged on past without a glance.

“It wasn’t until two years later, at YMCA science camp, that we met up and actually talked and decided, as seventh graders do, that we are going to ‘go steady,’ which means we’ll sit together on the bus to the dairy farm. In the mountains of West Virginia, if you live a few miles away, you might as well live a continent away since social media was (Ray Bradbury) fiction.

“So it wasn’t until high school that we saw each other on the sideline of a football game; he, still in his quarterback uniform; I had traded my bulky cheerleading uniform in for a sleeker, military-style, drum majorette uniform.  He called that night.”

I moved to Tuscaloosa in the fall of 2009 to work for the Tuscaloosa News. At least twice a week I attended press conferences with Coach Saban. Game recaps, prognostications and not making him (too) mad were on the top of my list, but at the same time I was looking for the human element.

It quickly became apparent to me how much Nick Saban loved (and loves) his wife. Normally he wore an expression that appeared as if he wished to be anywhere else; it was only when he talked about “Miss Terry,” the name he calls her, that a grin crept across his face. He told us how she picked out his clothes, told him where to go and how to get there, and in so many words, how she rules the roost. Someone who was on the precipice, at that time, of being the most dominant coach in college football, had someone even more powerful in his eyes standing behind him.

Those are things you can’t forget.