RALEIGH -- Kaye Young Cowher, a former standout basketball player at N.C. State and the wife of former Pittsburgh Steelers coach Bill Cowher, died Friday of skin cancer. She was 54.
A fixture at Steelers' games during her husband's 15 seasons coaching the NFL power, Kaye Cowher was frequently spotted cheering from a private box at home games and consoling him after four AFC Championship Game losses that preceded his team's Super Bowl XL victory over the Seattle Seahawks in 2006.
That same year, 30 years after they were classmates at N.C. State, the Cowhers relocated to Raleigh, closer to her family's North Carolina roots. The Cowhers have three daughters. Their older two daughters, Meagan and Lauren, played basketball at Princeton. Their youngest daughter, Lindsay, graduated from Ravenscroft School and now plays college basketball for Wofford.
"Kaye was such a loving and compassionate person and she was the foundation of our family," Bill Cowher, now an NFL analyst with CBS, said in a statement released Saturday. "Kaye was always at my side throughout my career as a player, coach, NFL analyst and, most importantly, as a parent to our three daughters."
Bill Cowher, a former N.C. State linebacker who met his wife in college, added, "Kaye was the rock that we could all lean on in the tough times. She was looked up to by so many people, and I cannot say enough about what Kaye meant to our family."
The former Kaye Young grew up on a tobacco farm in Bunn. She and her twin sister Faye spent their first two years of college at Peace College before transferring in 1976 to N.C. State, where they starred for Wolfpack coach Kay Yow's basketball team.
They led the 1977-78 Wolfpack to a 29-5 record and the program's first ACC women's title.
ACC associate commissioner Nora Lynn Finch coached the Young sisters at Peace and eventually followed them to N.C. State to join Yow's staff.
"One of the greatest blessings about coaching is the number of players who truly become family. Kaye and Faye were two that made such a positive impact on myself as well as the teammates and coaches that surrounded them," Finch said in a statement released Saturday. "Kaye was one of the most competitive players I ever coached. She worked extremely hard for everything and never took shortcuts, whether in basketball or in life. I am deeply saddened by this loss and will forever carry much love and respect for Kaye and her family."
Kaye Cowher graduated from State in 1978 with a degree in sociology. The twins went on to play three seasons in the now-defunct Women's Professional Basketball League, and during their pro careers the photogenic sisters filmed a commercial for Wrigley Doublemint gum.
The Cowhers married in 1981 as Kaye wrapped up her playing career. Bill Cowher played for the Cleveland Browns and Philadelphia Eagles before moving into coaching, and one of Kaye Cowher's former teammates recalled visiting them while they were in Cleveland.
"The thing that I remember was that she had him up early in the morning and he used to take the cats for a walk," former N.C. State basketball player Sherri Pickard said Saturday. "They had this little collar and a leash. My image was, 'This guy really loves her. Here's this big football player out in the neighborhood watching these cats.'
"I've spent some time with them through the years, and they always seemed to have a very playful, respectful, loving relationship."
As a teammate, Pickard said, Kaye was always competitive while also finding a way to pick teammates up with a kind comment if they were having a bad day.
"This is a tremendous blow," Pickard said. "It does not compute. It just doesn't make sense. Kaye was a great mom. She has three wonderful, great, well-adjusted, mature, strong daughters, and that was her. That was predominantly her doing, because being the wife of an NFL coach, he was active [as a parent], but I'm sure Kaye had the bulk of the experience for most of the year. ... They must be just completely lost to lose their mother so young."
Even as her husband's success elevated him to the elite ranks of the NFL's coaching circles, Kaye Cowher - and Bill - maintained a connection with N.C. State. In 1996, when the Steelers were preparing to face the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl XXX, they sent a ticket to the game to Yow, who made it to Tempe, Ariz., for the game.
At the time of her death, Kaye Cowher was serving on N.C. State's Board of Visitors, which advises the school's chancellor and board of trustees.
Cowher's death came one day after N.C. State's athletic family also lost former Wolfpack football standout Dennis Byrd, a member of the College Football Hall of Fame.
Byrd died at the Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte after suffering a heart attack on July 15.
State executive senior associate athletic director David Horning, a former Wolfpack teammate of Bill Cowher's, said it has been a tough week.
"We've lost some family members and we feel it," he said. "First Dennis Byrd and now Kaye. We're in mourning now."
A private funeral service will be held Monday in North Carolina.
Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.
