Heather Fleck is the wife of P.J. Fleck, the University of Minnesota football coach. The two married on February 11, 2016, in Hawaii, and PJ Fleck’s wife Heather has been a visible part of the Gophers program since he was hired in January 2017.
P.J. Fleck has been married twice, he is the father of a blended family, and one of his children died in infancy. The first marriage is named in reference databases but has no reported account behind it, and the details of the second are dated to a single 2020 profile. Sorting the family into names, dates and gaps is more useful than repeating all three as if they carried equal weight.
Heather Fleck at a Glance
| Detail | Record | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Full name | Heather Fleck, née Jackson | IMDb and Wikipedia name records |
| Married | February 11, 2016, in Hawaii | IMDb; the Pioneer Press profile of her |
| Age | 40 when the Pioneer Press profiled her in October 2020 | Twin Cities Pioneer Press, October 23, 2020 |
| Hometown | Michigan, raised near Kalamazoo | Twin Cities Pioneer Press, October 23, 2020 |
| Sports background | Three-sport athlete at Gobles High School: basketball point guard, volleyball setter, softball shortstop and center field | Twin Cities Pioneer Press, October 23, 2020 |
| In the program | Known to players as “Momma Fleck”; Ronald McDonald House board member | Twin Cities Pioneer Press, October 23, 2020 |
The profile is the only substantial one published about her, and it is a dated document. Read it as a snapshot of a person in 2020 rather than as a current biography.
Heather Fleck: Background and Career
Heather Fleck grew up in Michigan and was a three-sport athlete at Gobles High School, a small school outside Kalamazoo, where she played point guard, setter, shortstop and center field. She was working at Ziegler Automotive Group in Kalamazoo in 2013, when P.J. took his first head coaching job at Western Michigan.
Her public role since then has been built around the football program and around charity work rather than a salaried job. She runs the Fleck Family Fund, serves on the board of directors of the Ronald McDonald House in the Twin Cities, and has volunteered at the University of Minnesota Masonic Children’s Hospital. She is also the person players text when something is going wrong away from the field.
Heather says she communicates with about 10 to 15 current players regularly, and she hands out her cellphone number so they can reach her. That work is the reason the nickname stuck. “I’m not the only one who thinks she is a mother figure,” said Noah Hickcox, a former Gophers defensive lineman.
One habit of hers is easy to miss in a highlight reel: she keeps custom photo books of each season, roughly 1,000 photos across 100 pages, and the 2019 edition leaves out the losses to Iowa and Wisconsin.
How P.J. and Heather Fleck Met
The two met in Kalamazoo, not in Minnesota. Heather heard P.J. speak at a Western Michigan sponsorship event at eight in the morning and, in her words, wondered who this guy was and why he was yelling at everyone. It was not an instant match.
At the time, he was coming off a 1-11 first season in the Mid-American Conference and was going through a divorce. A mutual friend tried to set them up and got nowhere, because P.J. had said he could not handle any more rejection. Heather’s own reaction was that she was not going to ask out a 1-11 divorced head coach.
She asked him out anyway. “I literally went to his office one day and told him to get in the car,” she told the Pioneer Press. They drove about 50 miles north to Rose’s, a lakeside restaurant in Grand Rapids, which she described as their safe zone while the relationship stayed out of public view.
They married in Hawaii in February 2016. Both had been married before, and both brought children into the household.
P.J. Fleck’s First Wife and the Blended Family
The name attached to P.J. Fleck’s first marriage in the entertainment databases is Tracie Striebel. IMDb’s name record lists her as his previous spouse and dates the marriage to Heather Jackson from February 11, 2016. Beyond the name and the sequence, the public record is close to empty.
No outlet has published a reported account of that first marriage. There is no sourced wedding date, no sourced divorce date, no occupation and no current detail about her, which is why the name appears almost exclusively in database entries. Where a name is all a database has, that is what a page should report, and it should say so instead of dressing the entry up as biography.
The household the second marriage created is better documented. Heather brought her son Gavin from her first marriage; P.J. brought Carter, Paisley and Harper. Heather described the arrangement to the Pioneer Press as a blended family of six, with custody of Gavin shared with his father in Michigan and custody of the other three shared with their mother in St. Louis. Two marriages with children on both sides is a pattern the site has covered before, as in Badshah’s two marriages, and Manoj Tiwari’s two families shows how differently the same sequence can be documented.
One claim you will run into on Minnesota fan forums is that the two marriages overlapped, that P.J. and Heather were both still married to their first spouses when they got together. The version posted on GopherHole is explicit that the poster is recalling an allegation and a hint, not reporting a fact. No outlet supports it. The dated sequence is the only sequence anyone has put on the record, and it runs from a divorce in progress in 2013 to a wedding in February 2016.
The Fleck Children, Including Colt
P.J. Fleck has five children: Gavin Jackson, Carter Joseph, Colt, Paisley Jane and Harper. Colt died on February 9, 2011, of a heart condition, shortly after birth. He is the child behind the phrase that now follows the coach everywhere.
Fleck has described the loss himself, most fully at the 2016 What Drives Winning conference. “As you hold your son as he passes away, your whole life changes,” he said, and he calls Row the Boat his second son’s life, continued through his own. The mantra did not begin as a football slogan and it predates Minnesota by five years. The Twin Cities Pioneer Press account of that explanation is the fullest version in his own words.
Its three parts are the oar, the boat and the compass. The oar is the energy a person brings; the boat is what they sacrifice, and it grows as more people are brought aboard; the compass is the company they keep, because the people around you set the direction. Fleck’s teams carry an oar onto the field because of all of it.
The family’s other dates are scattered. Paisley Jane was born on December 17, 2012, the same day Western Michigan announced Fleck as its head coach. Heather’s son Gavin is the oldest of the five, and the children live across two states, spending parts of the year in Minnesota.
What the Public Record Does Not Settle
The family questions do not all have answers of the same quality, and the difference is worth knowing before you repeat any of them.
The useful distinction is not between true and false but between a dated statement from a named source, a database entry, and a claim nobody has reported. The table below is the version to keep if you need to repeat any of it somewhere else.
| Question | What the record supports | Status of the answer |
|---|---|---|
| Who is P.J. Fleck’s wife? | Heather Fleck, née Jackson; married February 11, 2016 | Dated record, corroborated by a reported profile |
| Who is P.J. Fleck’s ex-wife? | Tracie Striebel, named only in entertainment databases | Database entry; no reported account exists |
| Was his first wife Tracie? | The databases say yes; no news outlet has reported on the marriage | Single type of source, treated as an entry rather than a finding |
| What happened to his son? | Colt died on February 9, 2011, of a heart condition | Dated primary account, in Fleck’s own words |
| How old is Heather Fleck? | 40 in October 2020, when a profile put her age on the record | Dated profile; birth year never published |
| What is P.J. Fleck paid? | A $700,000 bonus took his deal to $7.9 million, 10th in the Big Ten | Reported February 2026 by FOX 9 and the Associated Press |
| Did he play college football? | Yes, wide receiver at Northern Illinois; a 2004 undrafted free agent with the 49ers | Reference records, consistent across sources |
Two gaps in that table are worth naming. Heather Fleck’s birth year has never been published, so any specific current age you see is arithmetic on top of a single 2020 figure rather than a reported fact. If you need the salary line, use the February 2026 report, because the university has not published the full terms of the revised agreement.
PJ Fleck Wife: FAQ
Who is P.J. Fleck’s wife?
Heather Fleck, née Jackson, is P.J. Fleck’s wife. They married on February 11, 2016, in Hawaii, and she is known around the Minnesota program as “Momma Fleck” for her work with players and local charities.
Who is PJ Fleck’s ex-wife?
Entertainment databases name Tracie Striebel as his previous spouse, and IMDb lists the marriage ahead of his 2016 wedding to Heather Jackson. No news outlet has published a reported account of that first marriage, so the name is a database entry rather than a documented biography.
Was P.J. Fleck’s first wife Tracie?
The available name records say yes and identify her as Tracie Striebel. Because only entertainment databases carry the name, treat it as the strongest available entry rather than as confirmed reporting. No source gives the wedding or divorce dates.
What happened to P.J. Fleck’s son?
His son Colt died on February 9, 2011, of a heart condition, shortly after birth. Fleck has spoken about the loss himself, and Row the Boat, the mantra his teams use, grew out of his grieving for Colt.
How many children does P.J. Fleck have?
Five, in a blended family. Heather brought her son Gavin from her first marriage; P.J. brought Carter, Paisley and Harper. Heather described the household to the Pioneer Press as a blended family of six, with custody shared across two states.
How old is Heather Fleck?
A Twin Cities Pioneer Press profile published on October 23, 2020, put her age at 40. Her birth year has never been published, so a current figure depends on that one dated number rather than on a second source.
Did P.J. Fleck play college football?
He did. Fleck played wide receiver at Northern Illinois University, graduated in 2004, and signed with the San Francisco 49ers as an undrafted free agent that year, spending most of a short professional career on the practice squad.
