Personal Life, Retirement and Death
Rozelle married his first wife, an artist named Jane Coupe, in 1949. The couple had one child, Anne, born in 1958: however, Jane's problems with alcohol meant that Rozelle (along with his lifelong secretary, Thelma Elkjer) was his daughter's primary caretaker, unheard of in that era. It was not uncommon to see Anne at owner's meetings (some joked that her love of Joe Namath was a reason behind the AFL-NFL merger) or for Rozelle to take off early to help her with schoolwork or to take her out on the town. Rozelle and Coupe divorced in 1967 (with Rozelle awarded full custody of Anne), and he remarried in 1974 to Carrie Cooke, daughter-in-law of sports impresario Jack Kent Cooke, who owned the Washington Redskins. This time, the two stayed together until his death on December 6, 1996 in Rancho Santa Fe, California.
Under Rozelle the NFL thrived and had become an American icon, despite two players' strikes and two different upstart leagues. He retired as commissioner on November 5, 1989. By the time of his resignation, the number of teams in the league had grown to 28, and team owners presided over sizable revenues from U.S. broadcasting networks.
Rozelle died of brain cancer at the age of 70 on December 6, 1996 in Rancho Santa Fe. The following month the NFL honored his legacy by wearing a decal on the back of the Green Bay Packers and New England Patriots helmets during Super Bowl XXXI that had the NFL shield with Pete in cursive on it. Pete Rozelle is interred at El Camino Memorial Park in San Diego, California.
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