Kaye Cowher, the wife of former football coach Bill Cowher Steelers, died Friday in his native North Carolina after losing a battle with skin cancer. She was 54.Cowhers moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, in 2006, the final season, Mr. Cowher to coaching Steelers, and continued to do it at home.
Cowhers met when they studied at the University of North Carolina in 1976. Mr. Cowher was the football team, and Ms. Cowher, the former Kay Young, and her twin sister, Faye, played basketball.
Tall at 5-foot-11, Ms. Cowher appears in the power game, making it one of the first young women in her native country, to get college athletic scholarship.
Her group of North Carolina went 21-3 and 29-5 respectively to win the first basketball title of the Atlantic Coast Conference on Women in 1978 with a 9-0 record and rank number 3 on the national level.
Faye and Kaye later played professional basketball women's league, where Mrs. Cowher was one of the pioneers in the early days of Title IX. They played one season in New York and two stars from the New Jersey Gems, competing against well-known stars, Carol Blazejowski and Nancy Lieberman.
After the league folded in 1981, she married Mr. Cowher, who was then playing for the Cleveland Brown.
March Rial / Post-Gazette
Kaye Cowher and her daughter Megan in 2002 in the gym in Fox Chapel.
C Bunn, NC, where her father at first refused to his twin daughters to play rough basketball, his mother, Mrs. Cowher did.
''So we played that on my mother, "said Kay Cowher Post-Gazette in 2002." She said absolutely, these girls are going to be able to play. "
She also appeared in Wrigley Doublemint gum commercial with her sister.
Ms. Cowher spent two years in college peace in Raleigh prior to the transfer of North Carolina, where she graduated with a bachelor's degree in sociology in 1978.
At the time of her death she was a member of the North Carolina Board of Visitors, the honorable body that advises the chancellor and board of trustees.
Cowhers have three daughters, Megan, Lauren, and Lindsay, all of which were outstanding basketball players. Elder 2, Megan and Lauren, played together at Princeton University, where Megan was the fourth largest scorer in the history of the program, and Lauren was a captain of the end of the 2008-09 season as top scorer.
Parents often take their daughters to the Tigers game.
Girls''get all the skills from my mother - she began to teach them at an early age, "Bill once told The Daily Princetonian." I'm just a spectator who loves the game. "
Ms. Cowher was a constant presence in the press box during the Steelers game and was recognized as a decisive and steel, as her more famous husband.
She was the driving force behind her husband's retirement in 2007, pressing it to move with her and their youngest daughter in North Carolina, help with driving the basketball, join the nuclear family prior to their final daughter left the nest. Lindsay last winter, finished the season in freshman Wofford College in Spartanburg, SC, where she played rarely in 14 games.
Over the past three years, Mr. Cowher, a native of Crafton who attended Carlynton High School, worked as a studio analyst with CBS Sports for its "NFL Today" show.
The family requested privacy and has released no information about the death of Mrs. Cowher in. Services will be held in North Carolina on Monday.
