Bo Jackson wife searches all lead to the same person: Linda Jackson, whom he married in September 1987. She was his college sweetheart at Auburn University, where she was a graduate student while he was becoming the most famous athlete in America.
Together they have three children sons Garrett and Nicholas, and daughter Morgan plus grandchildren. Linda has spent nearly four decades married to one of the most recognisable figures in American sport, and she has stayed almost entirely out of the spotlight the whole time. Below you will find how they met, how long they have been married, who their children are, and what the Jackson family looks like today.
Who Is Bo Jackson’s Wife?
Linda Jackson, born Linda Garrett, is a counsellor and psychologist by training who married Bo Jackson in 1987.
The two met at Auburn University in the mid-1980s. He was a running back on his way to the Heisman Trophy. She was a graduate student in psychology, and by most accounts she had no particular interest in football when they were introduced. That detail matters. Linda knew Bo before the Nike ads, before the two-sport stardom, before “Bo Knows” became one of the most famous slogans in advertising history.
The Encyclopedia of Alabama describes her simply as a psychology student at Auburn whom Jackson married in 1987, and notes the couple went on to have three children. That is roughly where the confirmed record ends and the internet’s guesswork begins.
Here is something worth knowing before you read anything else about her. Websites disagree sharply on Linda’s exact job title. Some call her a clinical psychologist, others a counselling psychologist, others a rehabilitation counsellor. Reference sources also differ on whether her highest degree was a master’s or a doctorate. These claims cannot all be right, and few of them cite anything.
What is well supported is the shape of her career rather than the label: graduate training in counselling psychology at Auburn, and work in mental health services, including a supervisory role in a children’s programme at a community mental health centre in Alabama. Beyond that, be careful what you believe.
When Did Bo Jackson and Linda Get Married?
They married in September 1987, widely reported as 5 September.
The timing is remarkable when you line it up against his career. In 1987, Jackson was hitting home runs for the Kansas City Royals and had just been drafted by the Los Angeles Raiders, who agreed to let him play both sports. He was 24 years old, newly a two-sport professional, and getting married in the middle of it.
Their first son had already been born the previous summer. The wedding came after Linda moved to Kansas City to join him.
How Long Have Bo Jackson and Linda Been Married?
From 1987 to 2026 is 39 years. That is close to four decades together.
Put that number in context. Jackson’s entire professional playing career lasted about eight seasons. His marriage has now outlasted it by more than four times over. He has been married longer than he was famous for being an athlete.
The relationship survived a schedule almost nobody else in sport has attempted. During his peak years, Jackson played baseball through the summer, joined the Raiders midway through the football season, and moved his family between Kansas City, Los Angeles and Alabama. Then came the hip injury that ended everything, the comeback attempt, the hip replacement, and the retirement in 1994. Through all of it, the marriage held.
Long careers in sport are rare. Long marriages inside them are rarer.
How Did Bo Jackson and Linda Meet?
Both were students at Auburn University in the mid-1980s.
The broad outline is agreed on: they met on campus, Linda was in graduate school studying psychology, and Bo was an undergraduate athlete. Accounts of the specifics differ. Some tellings place the meeting in a student lounge; others describe Linda working as a tutor connected to Auburn’s athletic department. Neither version has been confirmed by a primary source, so treat the details loosely and the outline as solid.
What is not in dispute is the timing, and the timing is the interesting part.
They got together before Bo Jackson became Bo Jackson. He won the Heisman Trophy in 1985, signed with the Royals in 1986, and became a national advertising phenomenon shortly after. Linda knew him through all of that, but she met him first.
That sequence may explain a lot about how private the family has stayed. Their relationship was never built on his fame, so it never needed his fame to sustain it. A marriage that starts in a college town before the money arrives tends to have a different centre of gravity than one that starts after.
Who Is Linda Jackson Outside of Being Bo Jackson’s Wife?
She is an educated professional who built a career in mental health, and who has consistently declined to trade on her husband’s name.
Reported details of her background include a bachelor’s degree from Tuskegee University and graduate study in counselling psychology at Auburn. She has been described as having worked as a supervisor in a residential children’s programme at a community mental health centre in Alabama, and later in counselling roles connected to a hospital.
She also had a serious academic interest of her own. Reporting from her graduate years describes research focused on the experiences of women who survived childhood sexual abuse and the connections to substance use the kind of work nobody undertakes for attention.
Now the honest caveat. Almost none of that comes from Linda herself. She has given very few interviews across nearly forty years, and the biographical fragments in circulation trace back to a small number of newspaper profiles from the late 1980s and early 1990s. Anything you read claiming to know her current employer, her exact age, or what she does on a given Tuesday is being invented.
KOKA Sports is not going to fill those gaps with guesses. Linda Jackson is a private person who happens to be married to a famous one, and the second fact does not cancel the first.
Does Bo Jackson Have Children?
Yes. Bo and Linda Jackson have three children: sons Garrett and Nicholas, and daughter Morgan.
This is one of the better-documented parts of the family story. Reference sources including the Encyclopedia of Alabama and Encyclopedia.com confirm all three, and the children appeared publicly with their parents as recently as 2024.
The children grew up inside a genuinely unusual childhood. Their father was playing two professional sports at once, which meant the family moved between cities on a schedule dictated by two league calendars. Jackson has spoken over the years about how much that cost him in time at home, and about why he walked away from professional sport in 1994 rather than chase a longer career.
He grew up without his father in the house. He has been open about not wanting to repeat that.
What you will not find is much public detail about the three of them, and that is by design. They are private adults, and the family has kept it that way.
Who Are Bo Jackson’s Sons?
Garrett Jackson was born in 1986, and Nicholas Jackson followed in 1988.
Garrett’s arrival came with a story his father still tells: he was born on the same day Bo hit his first professional home run. Neither son followed their father into college athletics, and neither has sought a public profile. Beyond that, there is little verified information available and no good reason to go digging for more.
Who Is Bo Jackson’s Daughter?
Morgan Jackson is the youngest of the three children, born around 1989.
She ran track in high school, which put her briefly in the same events her father dominated as a two-time state decathlon champion, before stepping away from the sport to focus on academics. She later attended Auburn, the university where her parents met. That is the extent of what has been reliably reported, and it is where this section stops.
Bo Jackson’s Wife and Kids: A Look at His Family Life
How do you raise three children while playing two professional sports?
Badly, by Jackson’s own account. He has spoken candidly over the years about the strain of moving his family between Kansas City, Los Angeles and Alabama, and about the parts of his children’s early lives he missed while chasing a schedule no one else was keeping.
There is a story he still tells about the day his daughter was born. He deliberately got himself ejected from a Royals game in the first inning took a called strike three and said something to the umpire he knew would get him tossed so he could leave the ballpark, drive to the hospital, and spend the day with his wife and newborn. He has called it his favourite moment in a Kansas City uniform. Not a home run. Not a highlight. That.
When Jackson retired in 1994 after his hip replacement, he said plainly that he wanted more time with his family. He then declined most of the coaching and front-office offers that came his way.
For an athlete defined by spectacle, his stated priorities were remarkably ordinary.
Does Bo Jackson Have Grandchildren?
Yes. Bo Jackson is a grandfather.
The clearest public confirmation came in June 2024, when the Kansas City Royals inducted Jackson into their team Hall of Fame. Coverage of the ceremony noted that his wife Linda, their three children and two grandchildren were seated together for the induction, and one young grandson sat beside him during the event.
That is the appropriate amount of detail for this article. The grandchildren are small children who did not choose to be part of a famous family, and KOKA Sports is not going to build a section around them. Bo Jackson is a grandfather. The family showed up for him. That is the story.
Bo Jackson Quick Facts
| Fact | Details |
|---|---|
| Full name | Vincent Edward Jackson |
| Known as | Bo Jackson |
| Born | 30 November 1962 |
| Age | 63 (turns 64 in November 2026) |
| Birthplace | Bessemer, Alabama |
| Listed height | 6 ft 1 in |
| College | Auburn University |
| Wife | Linda Jackson (née Garrett) |
| Married | September 1987 |
| Children | Three Garrett, Nicholas, Morgan |
| Grandchildren | Yes |
| Sports | Baseball and American football |
| Major honours | 1985 Heisman Trophy; MLB and NFL All-Star; Royals Hall of Fame (2024) |
Jackson remains the only athlete named an All-Star in both Major League Baseball and the NFL. If you are newer to American football and want the basics before diving into his Raiders years, our guide to how many players are on a football team is a useful starting point.
Why Is Bo Jackson’s Family Life So Private?
Because both of them chose it, and then stuck to it for forty years.
Jackson has never been a confessional public figure. He does the appearances, the charity work and the occasional interview, and he keeps the rest closed. Linda has gone further still, granting almost no interviews across the entire span of her husband’s fame.
That creates a vacuum, and vacuums get filled. Search her name and you will find pages listing her exact age, her current job, her net worth and her daily life, none of it sourced to anything. Some of it contradicts the rest of it. All of it was written to satisfy a search query rather than to report a fact.
So here is a trust rule worth carrying beyond this article. If a page states a private person’s precise age, salary or employer without naming where the information came from, assume it was guessed. Verified facts, reported claims and invented detail are three different things, and low-quality celebrity sites present all three in the same confident tone.
What Does Bo Jackson Do Now?
He is retired from sport but far from retired from public life.
Since leaving professional athletics, Jackson has run business ventures, stayed connected to Auburn, and put serious weight behind charitable work. His best-known effort is Bo Bikes Bama, the annual charity bike ride he launched in 2012 to honour the 252 people killed in the April 2011 Alabama tornadoes and to fund the state’s Governor’s Emergency Relief Fund.
That ride became a genuine institution. Over fourteen years it raised more than $2.1 million, money that went into repairing hundreds of homes and building dozens of community storm shelters across Alabama. Jackson brought famous friends along Ken Griffey Jr. and Scottie Pippen among them and thousands of ordinary cyclists rode with him.
The final Bo Bikes Bama ride was held in May 2025, closing out the fourteen-year run.
He also received one of the honours that had long eluded him. In June 2024, the Royals inducted him into the team’s Hall of Fame at Kauffman Stadium, three decades after he retired. He told the crowd that Kansas City was where he became a man in the sports world.
FAQS About Bo Jackson Wife and Family
Who is Bo Jackson’s wife?
Linda Jackson, born Linda Garrett. The two met as students at Auburn University in the mid-1980s and married in September 1987. She trained in counselling psychology and has kept a very low public profile throughout her husband’s career.
Did Bo Jackson ever have any kids?
Yes. Bo and Linda have three children together: sons Garrett, born in 1986, and Nicholas, born in 1988, and daughter Morgan, born around 1989. All three are now adults and none has pursued a public career.
Does Bo Jackson have a daughter?
Yes. His daughter is Morgan Jackson, the youngest of the three children. She ran high school track before turning her focus to academics, and later attended Auburn University, where her parents first met.
How many children does Bo Jackson have?
Three. Two sons and one daughter Garrett, Nicholas and Morgan. Multiple reference sources, including the Encyclopedia of Alabama, confirm the count.
Does Bo Jackson have grandchildren?
Yes. Coverage of his 2024 Kansas City Royals Hall of Fame induction reported that his wife, their three children and two grandchildren attended the ceremony together.
Conclusion : Who Is Bo Jackson’s Wife?
To bring it back to the question: Bo Jackson’s wife is Linda Jackson, and they have been married since September 1987. They met at Auburn before he won the Heisman, before the Royals, before the Raiders, and before the world decided he was the greatest athlete it had ever seen. Nearly four decades and three children later, they are still together.
Linda has never wanted the attention that comes with the surname, and she has done a rare job of avoiding it. Judge that as a choice worth respecting rather than a mystery to be solved. Bo Jackson’s career was extraordinary and thoroughly documented. His marriage has been long, quiet, and mostly his own business which is, in all likelihood, exactly how both of them wanted it.
