Stephanie Sarkisian, first wife of Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian, filed for divorce in Los Angeles County Superior Court on 20 April 2015, citing irreconcilable differences. He was running the USC football program at the time. He would be fired six months later over his drinking.
They married in 1997, the year he finished at BYU and went undrafted into the CFL. She was married to him through three seasons with the Saskatchewan Roughriders, through nine years of assistant jobs at El Camino College, USC and the Oakland Raiders, and through the five seasons at Washington that made him a head coach worth hiring.
Her one clearly documented public appearance came in December 2013, when USC introduced him as its new head coach. She sat in the front row with their three children. A Getty photographer captioned her as the wife of the incoming coach.
In August 2015, four months after she filed, Sarkisian was recorded slurring his words and swearing at a USC booster event called Salute to Troy. That October, six months after the filing, the university placed him on leave and then fired him by email while he was on a flight to an alcohol treatment centre.
Table of Contents
How the split became public
Conquest Chronicles, SB Nation’s USC site, reported the split on 21 April 2015. The Los Angeles Times confirmed it the same day through a school official, and published the statement Sarkisian’s management representatives had provided.
“It is our desire to protect the privacy of our children and each other,” it read.
The rest of it asked for the family to be left alone and said the two of them intended to raise the children together. It closed by saying they had nothing further to add.
TMZ obtained the court file about a week later. The filing date and the legal grounds came from there.
The lawsuit that named the divorce
In December 2015, two months after the firing, Sarkisian sued USC. The 31-page complaint accused the university of discriminating against him over alcoholism rather than giving him time to get treatment.
His own filing brought the marriage into it. As the Seattle Times reported, the complaint said the divorce had caused depression and anxiety that “ultimately furthered his alcohol dependency.”
It is the closest thing to a reason for the marriage ending anywhere in the court record, and it came from him. Stephanie was not a party to the case, and she has never publicly addressed what it said.
An arbitrator ruled against Sarkisian in July 2018 and awarded him nothing. He said he was disappointed and would not take it further.
What the settlement gave her
The divorce was finalised in November 2016, nineteen years after the wedding. TMZ, working from the court file, reported that most of the family’s money had been divided in a private settlement that never entered the public record. Sarkisian earned more than $10 million during his years at Washington, and more again at USC.
What did appear in the file:
- He kept the Mercedes, she kept the Land Rover
- He paid her a one-time $293,000 equalisation payment
- Neither side paid spousal support or child support
- They took joint custody of their three children
The file also settled something that had not happened yet. Sarkisian’s wrongful termination case against USC was still running, and the two of them agreed he would keep the entire judgment if he won it. She signed that in November 2016. The arbitrator ruled twenty months later.
Taylor, Ashley and Brady
Stephanie and Steve Sarkisian have three children, daughters Taylor and Ashley and a son, Brady. All three were minors when the divorce was filed. They grew up around Newport Beach, California.
Brady is the only one of them who has taken on any public life, and he did it on a football field. He played linebacker and edge rusher at Corona Del Mar High School, finished there in 2023, and walked on at Texas, where his father had been head coach for two seasons. He did not play as a freshman. His first real minutes came late in a 56-7 win over UTSA in September 2024.
Sarkisian, asked about it afterwards, said he had stopped coaching to watch. “I took my headset off, and I played dad for about three plays,” he told reporters.
Taylor and Ashley have not spoken publicly about their parents, and nothing reliable has been published about what either of them does now.
What is known about her now
Sarkisian rebuilt his career after USC. He worked under Nick Saban at Alabama, spent two seasons as offensive coordinator of the Atlanta Falcons, went back to Alabama, and took the Texas job in 2021. He married Loreal Smith in 2020.
Stephanie has said nothing about any of it. Her age, her occupation and where she lives now have never been confirmed in a credible report, and she has issued no statement since the one that went out through his representatives in April 2015.
Sarkisian has given his account of that year many times over, in interviews and in a court filing. Nothing on the public record gives hers.
