Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker, who is under fire over his comments about women in the workforce during a graduation speech last week, prayed for his wife, Isabelle, to convert to Catholicism, she said on a podcast back in 2022.
In an interview on the “Unraveled Podcast” in March 2022, Isabelle, who began dating Butker in high school, recalled how the football player became more devout in his Catholic faith while attending college. (Butker went to Georgia Tech between 2013 and 2016; Isabelle attended college in Memphis.) Meanwhile, she said that though she was raised “general Protestant,” she was not particularly devout at the time.
“He, in college, had reversion experience… one of his now best friends convinced him, ‘Hey, when was the last time you went to confession?’ and I’m pretty sure he had said like, ‘I don’t know 5, 6 years ago…’ Somehow [the friend] convinced him to go, and then after that, there was no looking back for him,” she said.
Isabelle explained that Butker, 28, began going to church more frequently after that, and “he was so excited and on fire about it.” However, she was more interested in playing college basketball and being part of a sorority.
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“I’m like, ‘Woah, settle down.’ I was very much my own person, no one can tell me what to do, independent,” Isabelle said.
The mother-of-two said that during her senior year in college, “Harrison wasn’t sure we would be able to have any future relationship” because of their different attitudes towards faith and that the kicker “was praying for me on his own.”
Amid Butker’s concerns about their future, Isabelle said that they “weren’t talking for a while” but she reached out after hitting “rock bottom” when she tore her ACL playing basketball and lost her grandmother.
“We reconnected. He stopped trying to force anything on me. He was just praying for me,” she said.
Isabelle said she began attending Catholic services with Butker and that shortly after graduating college, she experienced a spiritual awakening at a mass she and Butker attended on a family vacation.
“I’m sitting there and I’m like, ‘OK, God, I really just want to know what do I need to be doing here? Do I need to be Protestant? Do I need to be Catholic? I don’t understand which way to go. Please talk to me,’” she said. “I’m sitting there silently crying and suddenly I felt embraced, like someone was physically hugging me. I was like, ‘OK, this is what I’m supposed to be — the Catholic church, this is the truth.’”
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Isabelle went on to say that she was “so embarrassed” to tell Butker about her experience “for a month after that,” but when she told him she wanted to convert to Catholicism, he “broke down and was like, ‘My goodness.’”
“He’s like, ‘I’ve been praying for you every day, I’ve prayed the rosary for you, just hoping that you’d want to come into the church,’” she continued. “To me that was the most romantic thing.”
During his controversial graduation speech at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, on Saturday, May 11, Butker spoke about his wife as he espoused stereotypical gender roles to the women graduates in attendance.
“How many of you are sitting here now, about to cross this stage and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you are going to get in your career?” said Butker. “Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.”
Addressing Isabelle, Butker went on to say: “I’m beyond blessed with the many talents God has given me but it cannot be overstated that all of my success is made possible because a girl I met in band class back in middle school would convert to the faith and become my wife and embrace one of the most important titles of all — homemaker.”
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He added that Isabelle would be the “first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother.”
Butker said that he had seen “firsthand how much happier someone can be when they disregard the outside noise and move closer and closer to God’s will in their life.”
“Isabelle’s dream of having a career might not have come true, but if you ask her today if she has any regrets on her decision, she would laugh out loud without hesitation, and say, ‘Heck, no,’” said the NFL player.
Butker’s remarks have drawn criticism on social media and from various celebrities including Maria Shriver and Brooke Schwartz, the wife of Butker’s former Chiefs teammate Mitch Schwartz.
“This is what we’re telling young women graduating college? That the most important thing they can become is a homemaker??? What in the Handmaid’s Tale is this crap?” Schwartz wrote in an Instagram Story on Wednesday, May 15.
Meanwhile, a Change.org petition calling for the Chiefs to drop Butker in the wake of his comments has attracted more than 170,000 signatures.
