Christina Spirou Day, known to nearly everyone as Nina, is the wife of Ohio State head football coach Ryan Day and she has known him since they were six and seven years old. They grew up a mile and a half apart in Manchester, New Hampshire, played on the same tee-ball team, went through every grade of school together, and married in June 2005. They have three children. Away from football, the Days have become two of the most visible mental-health advocates in college sports, giving $1 million to Ohio State for that cause. Here is her story, her family, and the work she does that has nothing to do with a scoreboard.
Who Is Christina Spirou Day?
She is a New Hampshire native, a former university faculty member, a mother of three, and one half of one of the longest friendships in college football.
Her full name is Christina Spirou Day. Almost nobody uses it. She goes by Nina, and Ohio State’s own communications refer to her that way as often as not the university’s press release announcing the couple’s $1 million gift names the fund after “Nina and Ryan Day.”
Nina grew up in Manchester, New Hampshire, in a family where sport was simply the weather. Her father, Stan Spirou, coached men’s basketball at Southern New Hampshire University for more than three decades, winning over 600 games and taking his teams to two NCAA Division II Final Fours. Her mother, Patricia, worked at the same university. She has a twin sister, Kelly, and a brother, Chuck.
She attended the University of New Hampshire and earned a degree in communications, then worked at Southern New Hampshire University before stepping back as her husband’s coaching career started moving.
One quick note for anyone searching: several unrelated people with similar names appear in search results. This article is about Ryan Day’s wife.
Christina Spirou and Ryan Day’s Childhood Connection
How they first met
They met on a tee-ball field in the mid-1980s. She was seven. He was six.
That is not a rounded-up figure or a bit of romantic embroidery. Both have told the story publicly, and Nina has described them as best friends from that point on. They lived, by her own account, about a mile and a half apart in Manchester.
What makes this genuinely unusual is what did not happen. There was no meeting after he became famous, no introduction through a mutual friend once he had an NFL job. The friendship came first and everything else was built on top of it.
From childhood friends to high school sweethearts
They went through elementary school together, then middle school, then Manchester Central High School, then the University of New Hampshire, where Ryan played quarterback and linebacker under a young offensive coordinator named Chip Kelly.
Nina has said she kept a note she wrote in about seventh grade declaring that she was going to marry Ryan Day.
She was right. It just took a while.
When Did Christina Spirou Day Marry Ryan Day?
The couple married in June 2005, shortly after she finished at New Hampshire.
What followed was not a settled life. Ryan Day’s coaching career took the family through New Hampshire, Boston College, Temple, Florida, and then the NFL with the Philadelphia Eagles and San Francisco 49ers before Ohio State. Nina has put a number on it: within a fifteen-year span, they moved eleven times. Three children arrived during those same years.
She described that stretch bluntly as unstable a new city every year or two, packing and unpacking around a job that offers no guarantees and very little sleep.
That context matters for how you read this whole story. Christina Spirou Day is not the wife a famous coach acquired on the way up. She was there for the version of him that nobody was writing about, in the years when the job could have gone nowhere at all.
Does Ryan Day Have Children With Christina Spirou?
Yes. Ryan and Nina Day have three children: a son, Ryan Jr., known as RJ, and two daughters, Grace and Ourania, who goes by Nia.
Nia’s name carries the family forward in a neat way, echoing her mother’s own name. Beyond that, the Days keep their children’s lives fairly private, and this article is going to do the same. They are the coach’s kids, not public figures, and the family has never put them forward as anything else.
What the couple has spoken about openly is the strain that a coaching life puts on a family. Nina has been candid about her own discomfort with the attention that came when Ryan took the Ohio State job in 2019, telling a local station that she is a private person by nature and that being in the spotlight gave her anxiety but that she recognised she had a new role and could not simply hide from it.
That is a more honest answer than most public families give, and it says something about why the Days’ mental-health work reads as genuine rather than promotional.
Christina Spirou Day’s Family Background
Her New Hampshire family
The Spirou name is well known in New Hampshire, and not because of football.
Stan Spirou spent 33 seasons as head men’s basketball coach at Southern New Hampshire University, retiring in 2018 as one of the most successful coaches in Division II history. Nina grew up in gyms, watching her father work, with her mother Patricia, her twin sister Kelly and her brother Chuck.
So when people describe her as having adapted well to life inside a high-pressure coaching family, it is worth remembering she was raised inside one. She knew what the job did to a household long before she married someone who did it for a living.
Kelly still lives in New Hampshire and is a regular presence at Ohio State games, which occasionally confuses fans who spot what looks like two Ninas in the stands.
Is Christina Spirou Day Greek?
This is a common search, and it deserves a careful answer rather than a confident one.
Spirou is a surname of Greek origin, and her full name and her daughter’s name, Ourania, are Greek in origin too. That combination is almost certainly what drives the query.
What is missing is a public statement from Christina or her family about their heritage, and no reliable outlet appears to have reported on it directly. The name evidence points one way; the sourcing is simply not there to state it as documented fact. This article will note the pattern and stop short of declaring someone’s ethnicity on her behalf.
Her Connection to Ohio State Football
Ryan Day became Ohio State’s head coach in 2019, and Nina’s public profile arrived with the job whether she wanted it or not.
Being the head coach’s wife at Ohio State is not a quiet position. The program is one of the most scrutinised in American sport, and the coach’s family becomes part of the story by default celebrated in good seasons and, as the Days learned, targeted in bad ones. After four straight losses to Michigan, the criticism aimed at her husband grew genuinely ugly.
Then came January 2025, when Ohio State beat Notre Dame 34-23 to win the College Football Playoff national championship, the program’s first title in a decade. Day has since compiled an 82-12 record over seven seasons and signed a contract keeping him in Columbus through 2031.
Nina has been visible through all of it, at games and at team functions. If you are new to the sport and want the basics before following a season, our guide to how many players are on a football team is a useful primer.
Christina and Ryan Day’s Mental Health Advocacy
This is the part of Nina Day’s public life that has nothing to do with football, and it is the part that matters most.
The cause is deeply personal. Ryan Day’s father died by suicide when Ryan was eight years old, and he was raised by his mother, Lisa. He did not speak publicly about it for decades. That changed in 2018, after a recruiting visit to a high school that had experienced multiple student suicides pushed him to confront it.
Nina has been open about her own experience too, describing struggles with anxiety during and before her college years. The couple spoke about their mental health together as keynote speakers at an Ohio State commencement, telling graduates that showing vulnerability is a strength rather than a weakness.
The advocacy has real money behind it. The Days first established the Christina and Ryan Day Fund for Pediatric and Adolescent Mental Wellness through Nationwide Children’s Hospital, focused on children and teenagers. Then, in August 2022, they gave $1 million to Ohio State to launch the Nina and Ryan Day Resilience Fund, housed in the Wexner Medical Center’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health, aimed primarily at college-aged people.
In 2024, the couple received a STAR Award for Outstanding Contributions in the Fields of Trauma and Resilience.
Their stated goal is worth quoting in spirit rather than in full: to shift the conversation away from what untreated illness destroys and toward what resilience can build.
If you or someone you know is struggling, support is available. In the US and Canada, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline can be reached by calling or texting 988.
Christina Spirou Day’s Life Away From the Sidelines
Relatively little is publicly documented about her day-to-day life, and that appears to be entirely deliberate.
She has described herself as a private person. She rarely gives interviews, and the ones she has given have mostly been about the family’s mental-health work rather than about herself. She does not maintain a large public social media presence, and this article is not going to point readers toward accounts she has not promoted.
What is on the record: she supports charitable causes in addition to the mental-health funds, including PinkForZink, established in memory of a New Hampshire teenager. She enjoys golf and staying active.
Be sceptical of pages offering her net worth, her daily routine, or a detailed current job description. Those figures are typically invented. She was a university employee, she stepped back to raise three children through eleven moves in fifteen years, and she now does substantial charitable work. That is the honest version.
FAQs
Who did Ryan Day marry?
Ryan Day married Christina Spirou, known as Nina, in June 2005. The two grew up together in Manchester, New Hampshire, and had been friends since childhood, attending the same schools from elementary through the University of New Hampshire.
How many children does Ryan Day have?
Three. Their son is Ryan Jr., known as RJ, and their daughters are Grace and Ourania, who goes by Nia. The family keeps the children largely out of public view.
How did Christina Spirou and Ryan Day meet?
They met playing on the same tee-ball team in New Hampshire in the mid-1980s, when she was seven and he was six. They lived about a mile and a half apart in Manchester and became best friends.
What is Christina Spirou Day’s nickname?
Nina. It is used so widely that Ohio State’s own press materials refer to her that way, including in the name of the Nina and Ryan Day Resilience Fund.
What mental health work do the Days do?
They established a fund for pediatric and adolescent mental wellness through Nationwide Children’s Hospital and gave $1 million in 2022 to launch the Nina and Ryan Day Resilience Fund at Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center.
Final Thoughts on Christina Spirou Day
Strip away the job title and this is a straightforward story about two kids from Manchester, New Hampshire, who met on a tee-ball field and never really parted.
Christina Spirou Day is a coach’s daughter who became a coach’s wife, which meant eleven moves in fifteen years and three children raised in the middle of it. She is also, with her husband, one of the more serious mental-health advocates in American college sport not through a single photo opportunity, but through two named funds and a million dollars.
Ryan Day won a national championship in January 2025. Nina had been there since before anyone thought he might.
