Gregg Popovich got married on September 16 in Texas. He is 77 years old. The bride is Mary Barth Budenholzer, the ex-wife of Mike Budenholzer.
Yes, that Mike Budenholzer. The one who spent nearly two decades on Popovich’s staff in San Antonio.
The Connection Runs Deep
Budenholzer was one of Popovich’s longest-serving assistants. Together they were part of four championship teams in San Antonio before Budenholzer left in 2013 to take the Atlanta Hawks job.
Budenholzer and Mary separated and divorced in 2016. He went on to coach the Bucks and the Suns, and he sat out the 2025-26 season entirely.
So this is not a story about a marriage ending. That happened a decade ago. It is a story about who two people became afterward.
The Reaction Was Predictable
Social media did what social media does. The jokes wrote themselves, mostly variations on Popovich running the same play he always ran and Budenholzer never seeing the counter coming.
Some of it was funny. A lot of it was not, and it was aimed at a 77-year-old man who buried his wife of four decades.
Remember Where Popovich Has Been
Erin Popovich died in 2018 at age 67. Popovich, by every account from people inside that organization, was devastated in a way that colored the rest of his coaching career. He kept working because work was what he had.
A man in his late seventies finding companionship again, eight years after losing his wife, is exactly what everybody says they hope happens for people they love.
Where Popovich Stands Now
He retired from coaching in 2025 after 29 seasons as the winningest coach in NBA history at 1,390-824. He remains with the franchise as president of basketball operations.
The Spurs, under his front office, are now a legitimate title contender again after reaching last season’s Western Conference Finals and adding Tobias Harris to the core. His fingerprints are still all over the best young team in the league.
Let the Man Live
The optics are unusual. Nobody is pretending otherwise. Two adults who were both unattached made a decision about their own lives, and the timeline involved has had ten years to breathe.
Popovich spent three decades giving reporters short answers and giving his players everything. He has earned the right to have his personal life treated as personal.
Congratulations to him and to Mary. The jokes will run out by Friday, and the Spurs will still be one of the best teams in the West.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.