Who Is Roger Goodell’s Wife? All About Jane Skinner

Meet Jane Skinner, wife of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.

Skinner and Goodell have been married for over 25 years, a relationship that all started with a conversation about football.

The pair met through mutual friends, though lived in different states at the time. Goodell was already working for the NFL in New York, while an ambitious, career-minded Skinner was on track to achieving her “dream job” in Chicago.

Ultimately, Skinner did just that and embarked on a successful career in broadcast journalism as an anchor and co-host for Fox News Channel. Though she admitted marrying Goodell “took a little while” when speaking with the LA Times, she said he was “super patient” before she moved to New York.

Upon retiring from broadcast journalism in 2010, Skinner transitioned her work on screen to behind the camera. She produced several NFL-related projects centered around female professionals working for the league.

Skinner has accompanied Goodell at various games and events, like the NFL Honors. However, she told the outlet that the NFL Draft is her husband’s “favorite event by far” because “that’s when you see these young men’s dreams come true and their lives really change for their families.”

Read on to learn more about Roger Goodell’s wife, Jane Skinner.

She’s a former broadcast journalist

Skinner grew up in Chicago, Ill. and received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in broadcast journalism from Northwestern University.

Upon graduating, Skinner began her career as a reporter for television stations in Minnesota, Maine and Missouri before Fox News Channel hired her as a correspondent and weekend anchor.

Skinner co-anchored Happening Now with Jon Scott and held several hosting gigs on shows like Fox News Live and Sunday Best.  

In 2010, Skinner announced her retirement from broadcast journalism on air.

She married Roger Goodell in 1997

Skinner first met Goodell at a mutual friend’s wedding. During a conversation with the LA Times in February 2022, she explained how their love story began.

“I guess his friends would say he was kind of like a confirmed bachelor,” she joked of Goodell, noting that he’s about eight years older than her. Skinner recalled telling her mother that she was “not really interested” at first because she was “on a career path” at the time.

“I’m two years away from my dream job in Chicago,” she described of her mindset. Plus, Skinner was still living in Milwaukee and Goodell was working for the NFL in New York.

Regardless, Skinner thought “he was super nice” when they met. Ironically, their first-ever conversation was about the NFL.

Eventually, Skinner moved to New York, too, and the pair tied the knot in 1997. Goodell was appointed commissioner of the NFL in 2006.

She’s produced shows about women in sports

Skinner served as executive producer on several shows that place emphasis on female professionals in the sports industry, particularly the NFL. Between 2019 and 2022, she produced three projects.

The first project she co-executive producer was NFL Network’s A Lifetime of Sundays, a documentary that profiled four female trailblazers in the league: owners Norma Hunt, Virginia McCaskey, Martha Firestone Ford and Patricia Rooney.

Norma was referred to as the “First Lady in Football” and the only person to attend every Super Bowl until her death at age 85 in June 2023. Her husband, Lamar Hunt, founded the Chiefs in 1963 and her son, Clark Hunt, is the current chairman and CEO of the reining Super Bowl-winning team.

When speaking to Fox News, Skinner described the four women as “good students of the game” of football. “You know very much at the end of the film, what’s important to them.”

Skinner also worked on the league-backed podcast Earnin’ It: The NFL’s Forward Progress and Peacock’s five-part television series of the same name.

Her father is former White House Chief of Staff

Skinner is the daughter of Sam Skinner, former U.S. secretary of transportation and White House chief of staff under President George H. W. Bush. During her conversation with the LA Times, she said her family was “all about politics and sports.”

In 1972, Skinner’s dad was a Chicago Bears season ticket holder. “We spent a lot of time at Soldier Field,” she said of Sam and her two older brothers. “There were not a lot of little girls at Soldier Field, but it was very much a part of my family and our world.”

She shares twins with Roger

Skinner and Goodell welcomed twin daughters together in 2001. In contrast to their parents’ public lives, the girls stay out of the spotlight.