Let’s talk about Kelly Stafford not being a fan of the prenup idea with her NFL husband Matthew Stafford. I mean, can you blame her? Prenups are like saying, “Hey, just in case this whole marriage thing doesn’t work out, let’s figure out who gets what.” It’s not the most romantic topic, for sure.
But hey, we get it, it’s all about protecting your assets and making sure you’re both on the same page. And let’s be real, Matthew Stafford is a pretty successful NFL quarterback, so it’s understandable that they would want to have that discussion.
During the July 7 episode of her podcast The Morning After, Kelly, 36, reflected on how the couple navigated what can often be an uncomfortable topic, revealing that they tackled it head-on early in their engagement.
While the conversation felt daunting, Kelly said she soon realized that planning for any possibility didn’t mean she was setting herself up for failure.
“But then again, I had to look at it from the other direction and say, ‘Well, if we never get divorced, we’ll never need it anyway,’” she said. “So why wouldn’t I just do it?”
She emphasized that the final agreement was “very fair,” adding, “He was obviously generous in it all.”
At the time of their wedding, Matthew was already well-established in the NFL. Drafted No. 1 overall by the Detroit Lions in 2009, he signed a six-year, $72 million rookie deal—the richest in league history at the time—and later secured a three-year extension worth $53 million in 2013.
Kelly said she believes prenuptial agreements carry an unfair stigma and encouraged couples to view them less as a sign of mistrust and more as an opportunity to make important decisions together, free of outside interference.
“There’s such a negative connotation with prenups,” she acknowledged. “But I don’t think anybody realizes that if you don’t have one, the state controls everything. At the end of the day, the government has control over your contract. So making your own terms seems way smarter.”
She described the process as collaborative and proactive, noting that she and Matthew began working on the agreement right after getting engaged to avoid last-minute stress.
“Something that really helped us was the minute we got engaged, we started working on it,” she recalled. “I told him, ‘I don’t want to get close to the wedding day and have this hanging over us.’ At the time, I still had such a negative feeling about it, but I knew that I loved this man and he loved me. This was just something we had to do—and that’s totally fine.”
At the end of the day, every couple is different and what works for Kelly and Matthew may not work for everyone else. And hey, if they’re happy and in love, that’s all that really matters!
