The phone call that changed Mike Riley’s life came while he was sitting in Room 219 of a San Francisco Marriott.
On the line was his wife, Dee, who leveled him with news that had nothing to do with football: Kate, their then-22-year-old daughter, was pregnant. The father was her boyfriend, Jovan Stevenson, a backup running back for the Beavers.
Riley is deeply rooted in his Christian faith, a man who believes there’s always a plan and a reason and a solution, but this caught him entirely off guard.
“I didn’t know if I was having a heart attack or what,” says the normally unflappable Riley, recalling the moment, shaking his head and staring into space. “But those words, they just took my breath away.”
Mike worried instantly about Kate. He wasn’t mad or disappointed but he was scared, and he had a million questions: What will she do? Does she know how hard this could be? What kind of awful things will people outside the program say about my little girl? In Corvallis, Kate panicked for her dad, and herself: Will this hurt his reputation? Is he ashamed of me? Does this make me a cliché?
Dee Riley says her husband can compartmentalize with the best of them, but the news about Kate was only one of many things weighing on his mind that offseason. Besides a team that was falling apart, Riley was losing the man he grew up idolizing. A debilitating stroke in the spring of 2010 had moved Mike’s father, Bud Riley, into the final season of his life, and Mike was more than 500 miles away.
“I don’t remember sleeping much that offseason,” Mike says. “But I thought about what I teach our players: Life is about balance. I talk about that every day. I’ve got a family, I’ve got my job and I have to take the garbage out on Tuesday. So I’m going to go to work and we’re going to figure out what to do, and then I went home and we were going to figure out what to do.”
For almost three years, Mike declined to talk in depth about the 12-month span between his grandson’s birth and his father’s death. Though he is a warm, friendly face in a sport rife with grouchy old men who define themselves through wins and losses, Riley is intensely private. Through 38 years of coaching he has worked to shield his family from the media, wary of what they might have to endure. As the child of a coach, he learned quickly that “fan” and “friend” are not synonymous.
But a 3-foot tall, 29-pound boy with a mess of curly hair has changed all that. There is no shame and no denying that when Elijah Jo Riley Stevenson is in the room, his granddaddy has eyes for no one else.
“It’s a different threshold when it comes to my family,” Mike says. “My job is very public, and we’ve always been careful …
“For me, my life is focused through my faith. And that’s all been reinforced through this. Something that looked so hard has turned into the greatest thing in the world. It’s a little miracle.
“Maybe this is a good story. Maybe somebody out there needs to know, there’s a plan.”
A few weeks after Mike got the news in February that Kate was pregnant, the Rileys’ youngest child sat across from her parents, worried that her dad was about to lose it.
Instead, her dad started telling Kate stories about the players he had coached over the years, young men who were smart and accomplished and kind — and about the powerhouse single moms who raised them. No matter what happened between her and Stevenson, Riley assured his daughter, she could do this.
“This experience, it’s been one of shock and awe,” says Dee Riley. “But the shock was momentary, and the awe is every day. When Mike walked in the door (from that recruiting trip) we were on the same page: This baby was going to be celebrated. And we weren’t going to hide anything. This was real life.”
Baby Eli — as he’s known around the Valley Football Center — was born on Aug. 4, 2011, the first day of OSU’s fall camp. Riley was immediately smitten.
When she nursed, Kate craved Gatorade. So every night when he left his office, whether it was 10 p.m. or midnight, Riley went to his daughter’s apartment, toting a jug of Gatorade and offering a trade: She would drink it, he would hold Eli.
“That’s when their obsession really started with each other,” Kate says.
, a former standout OSU running back who remains close to the program, says Riley has always had “incredible perspective on life.” The Beavers pride themselves on being family friendly, and coaches’ families are as visible around campus as star players. But with Eli around, it’s different.
“Coach has always been good about compartmentalizing things,” Bernard says. “And he’s good about being able to move on after losses. He’s loose, he’s fun … but man, seeing him with Eli is something else. I think that now, more than ever, he cherishes the moment.”
Mike always adored Kate, the younger of his two children. She has an infectious spirit, a big smile and a bigger heart.
And like her dad, she thinks her story should be shared. She was frustrated and scared through the pregnancy, but now on the other side, she says, “I’m not going to lie to Eli about anything.”
Over the past three years, Mike says he’s gained “the greatest admiration” for his daughter. And it goes both ways.
Kate has always been close to her dad, but watching as Mike walked out of the visitors’ locker room at UCLA last fall and, in a moment of exuberance, grabbed Dee and dipped her into a kiss before exclaiming, “Baby Eli!” and
, well that kind of joy and pride, Kate says, “makes me love and respect him even more.”
