Terry Bradshaw: Dad, Actor, Singer, Commentator, Champion

As Terry Bradshaw’s “The Bradshaw Bunch” reality show hits the airways, Terry shows us the one side of his life we hadn’t seen: Being a dad.

A football icon, Terry Bradshaw has constantly worked hard and adapted to changes in his life.

Born in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1948, the middle child to Bill and Novis Bradshaw, Bradshaw had a strong work ethic inherited from his father. He once owned the national record for the javelin(245′) and was a standout at Woodlawn High School in Shreveport. Bradshaw’s successor at quarterback was Bills standout Joe Ferguson.

Bradshaw’s college career would be at Louisiana Tech. He actually backed up Duck Dynasty’s Phil “Roxie” Robertson in 1966 and 1967.

In 1970 Bradshaw was taken with the first overall pick by the Pittsburgh Steelers. He won 8 AFC Central Championships and 4 Super Bowls. He was the maestro of The Immaculate Reception and The Greatest Throw of all Time. In 1983, Bradshaw’s elbow would go bad on him and he announced his retirement. The next year in the draft, the Steelers would pass on Dan Marino.

But, that was just the beginning for Terry Bradshaw.

Commentator, Actor, Singer

Bradshaw signed with CBS right after his retirement and became a play-by-play announcer. In 1994, TB joined the team on Fox and remains a standard there to this day.

Bradshaw has also written or co-written five books and recorded six albums of country/western and gospel music. His cover of “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” hit Top 20 on Billboard’s country chart (and No. 91 on the Hot 100) in 1976; two other tunes (“The Last Word In Lonesome Is Me” and “Until You”) also made the country charts.

Terry is also the first NFL Football player to get a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame. He appeared in many movies including “Cannonball Run”  and “Smokey and the Bandit”. But, he reached superstar status when he starred opposite of Kathy Bates as Matthew McConaughey’s parents in “Failure To Launch”.

Bradshaw had a leading role in the NBC reality-travel series Better Late Than Never, where he travels around the world with William Shatner, Henry Winkler, George Foreman and Jeff Dye.

Dad

In September 2020 Bradshaw’s reality TV show “The Bradshaw Bunch” premiered. Bradshaw has been married four times. He was first married to Melissa Babish (Miss Teenage America, 1969) from 1972–73; to ice skater JoJo Starbuck from 1976–83; and to family attorney Charla Hopkins, who is the mother of his two daughters, Rachel and Erin, from 1983-99. Erin Bradshaw shows champion paint and quarter horses and is an honors graduate of the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas. Rachel Bradshaw is a graduate of Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, and appeared in Nashville (2007), a reality television series about young musicians trying to make it in Nashville, and is the widow of former Tennessee Titans kicker Rob Bironas.  Bradshaw was married for the fourth time, on July 8, 2014, to Tammy, his girlfriend of 15 years who also appears in the reality show with his daughters.