NBA Legend Secretly Marries Coach’s Ex-Wife

Gregg Popovich, the five-time NBA champion coach of the San Antonio Spurs, married Mary Barth Budenholzer on September 16, according to a marriage license obtained by TMZ. The ceremony was quiet. The names on the license were not.

Mary Barth Budenholzer is the former wife of Mike Budenholzer, who spent 1996 to 2013 as an assistant on Popovich’s Spurs staff before becoming a head coach elsewhere. The Budenholzers divorced in 2016.

Popovich’s wife, Erin, died in 2018 after a long illness. Parade later reported that Popovich and Mary “grew close in the years since” and were seen together at Spurs games last season before filing papers at the Bexar County courthouse.

Popovich suffered a stroke in 2024 and left the bench. He now serves as the Spurs’ president of basketball operations. Mary Barth Budenholzer has roots in Corpus Christi. Filing in Bexar County, home to San Antonio, fit both of their ties to the city.

The Spurs declined to comment. The license itself is the public record.

The story sits at the intersection of a small NBA coaching tree. Budenholzer learned the Spurs system under Popovich. Years later, the two men’s personal lives crossed in a way neither franchise statement was prepared to explain.

There is no public timeline of when the relationship began. Coverage has treated the courthouse date, not gossip about the years in between, as the hard fact.

For a coach who spent three decades controlling the message in San Antonio, the marriage became news only after the paperwork did.