She wasn’t looking for anyone or anything serious before they met because she had just gotten out of a long-term relationship. But that didn’t last long for Jared Goff’s future wife Christen Harper. The fiancée of the Detroit Lions quarterback has fully embraced WAG life since, following her beau from California to their new home in Michigan.
Both natives of the Sunshine State, Goff was born on October 14, 1994, in Novato, CA. He played college football for the California Golden Bears, setting season records for passing yards and passing touchdowns in the Pac-12 Conference. In the 2016 NFL Draft, Goff was selected first overall by the Los Angeles Rams, signing a four-year deal worth $27.9 million in guaranteed money, including an $18.6 million signing bonus. He had his first start against the Miami Dolphins in November of that year.
On March 18, 2021, Goff was traded to the Detroit Lions, a franchise known for losing, in exchange for quarterback Matthew Stafford. In December 2021, the Lions ended a 15-game losing streak when their new leader threw the game-winning touchdown. Jared Goff‘s future wife wasn’t there in the moment—she was on a photo shoot with Sports Illustrated—but her reaction was priceless when she found out.
Belief in Lions has slowly grown from there. They went into the 2024 NFC Championships first in the NFC North conference with 12 wins and 5 losses. “We’re going to the NFC Championship Game with that group of guys,” head coach Dan Campbell told The Athletic. “And they love football, they play football and that’s what they respect, and they respect their teammates and not anything else. And when you’re able to care more about the person next to you than … about yourself, you can do some pretty special things, and that’s where we’re at with this group.”
Jared Goff’s future wife
Jared Goff’s future wife is Christen Harper; a model who has also dabbled in acting. Most famously, she’s the co-winner of the 2021 Sports Illustrated Swim Search and was named co–Rookie of the Year (with Katie Austin).
She and Goff met on the celebrity dating app Raya and started dating in 2019. “I was truly not looking for anything at the time,” she told Sports Illustrated in September 2022. “I had just gotten out of a long relationship and I was trying to stay single for a year. Then I met him and the rest is history, baby.” The couple got engaged in June 2021. “6.16.22 can’t wait for forever with you,” Harper wrote in a caption announcing their engagement.
Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic
Goff has been pivotal in turning the Detroit Lions’ future around and Harper has been happy to be along for the ride, even leaving her home in California to move to Michigan. “We’ve always been in California, so there was an excitement to a fresh start, but at the same time, my whole career has been in LA and I did not know what it was going to look like moving away from that,” she told the New York Post. “I feel lucky to kind of start branching out into doing different things,” she continued. “I think the space allowed me to do that because if I stayed in LA, I probably would have continued to do the same work I’ve done for years.”
In December 2021 when Goff ended the Lions’ 15-game losing streak, she was on set with Sports Illustrated, who told her what had happened and showed her the clip. “It’s over? Shut up, shut up,” she beamed. “You guys, this is their first win, like this is crazy. … Oh my god, this is gonna make me cry.”
In 2022, Harper became a panelist on the Women of the League web series, which aimed to focus “on empowering women through raw, honest conversation that challenges the stereotype of what’s traditionally been perceived as a ‘typical’ NFL wife.”
During the show’s second episode, Harper spoke of what it was like up-ending her life in LA to help her partner pursue his dreams. “In LA, it was such a different experience for me because I did have friends and family, so I wasn’t as involved with the women on the team,” she said. “But moving to Detroit, it was such a stark contrast, I had nothing there. So I really relied on the women on the team.”
She continued, “Because we were in LA, I had the best of both worlds. I was working every day but I could still be with Jared … But once we moved that was a huge sacrifice for me, I was giving up a career. That was really hard and it really affected my identity and kind of who I was. I had a hard time at first,” she added of the move to Detroit. “I am still trying to find that balance of still having stuff that is my own and still working.”
Image: Taylor Trade Publishing.Taylor Trade Publishing.
For more about the NFL, football fans can check out When It Was Just a Game: Remembering the First Super Bowl
by Harvey Frommer. The best-selling book delves into the history of the first Super Bowl, which was originally known as the AFL-NFL Championship Game. (The term “Super Bowl” was coined only in its third year.) The debut game, between the winning Green Bay Packers and the Kansas City Chiefs, was played in front of only 61,946 people at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum—an audience well below the stadium’s capacity. Harvey Frommer, a sports historian and reporter, puts the tale of that momentous game together using oral history, gathered by hundreds of interviews with players, coaches, media and spectators alike.
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