Former New York Jets quarterback Brett Favre has remained in the public eye long after his retirement. His wife, Deanna Favre, has opened up over the years about their marriage and relationship issues, his battle with addiction, and her cancer diagnosis.
The couple remain in headlines following the new Netflix Documentary Untold: The Fall of Favre, which focuses on Favre's 2010 scandal in which he was accused of sending a rude photo and messages to New York Jets gamely host Jenn Sterner. Sterger describes the behavior as "unwanted" in the documentary.
Deanna Favre has not held back about the fact that the couple has had issues in their marriage over the years.
“I’m handling this through faith,” Deanna Favre said when asked about the Sterger accusations in the documentary.
Deanna Favre wrote an article for Guideposts in which she discusses various personal tragedies, including being diagnosed with breast cancer, her brother's tragic death in an ATV accident, and Brett Favre's painkiller addiction.
"That first week of October 2004 was tough, one of those weeks where right out of the blue your life will never be the same again," Deanna Favre wrote.
When Deanna Favre's breast cancer was diagnosed "Brett was on the phone in minutes. All he could say was, 'Oh, God,'" wrote Favre. The couple grew up together in small-town Mississippi, the high school sweethearts had two daughters and are still married to this day.
The Favres met at age 14, with Deanna first becoming pregnant at 19.
In college, the quarterback "had become a loud, rough party animal" with a mean side, wrote his wife.
Farve also had troubles with painkiller addiction.
"He was horribly addicted to painkillers, partly as a result of all the injuries he played with. We got through that. He went to The Menninger Clinic and got help. We went through counseling together and he was once again the best friend I’d ever had—and by now my husband."
The couple had broken up a few times over the years, always reuniting in the end.
“There were times when we were broken up and we were seeing other people, but we still talked,” Deanna told The Journal Times*.* “I always knew if the relationship didn’t work out, we could always be friends.”