Baker Mayfield and Emily Wilkinson (Getty Images)
Their relationship, which began quietly in 2017 with a Rose Bowl invitation, has since travelled across four NFL cities, survived a period of real marital strain, and landed somewhere most people would not have predicted a few years ago: stable, grounded, and growing. She packed up and moved to Cleveland when he was drafted by the Browns, and the two married in 2019.
“Yeah, I think I did, right?” she responded with a laugh. That exchange, captured on Instagram, said more about their dynamic than any formal announcement could. The version of their relationship that most people saw publicly, the social media posts and the sideline appearances, told only part of the story.
Baker Mayfield and Emily Wilkinson have never been the type to chase headlines. Wilkinson was initially hesitant to date Mayfield, assuming he was going to be a “typical playboy athlete. Once she got past that wall, though, the story changed quickly. Things moved fast. Six months into dating, Mayfield proposed. “Did you say yes? Mayfield asked Wilkinson. What often gets skipped in the surface-level coverage is just how much was already in motion for both of them. Wilkinson had lived in Los Angeles, built a career in healthcare, and was not looking for an NFL romance when Mayfield came along. Behind it, things got genuinely hard.
“God taught me a lesson,” Baker Mayfield said on the Sports Spectrum podcast. I mean, there were so many things failing in his life, really,” she said. “That was when we dove into PAO,” he said, referring to the Pro Athletes Outreach faith-based marriage conference. “Every year, Baker and I make it a priority to go to PAO, a faith-based marriage conference for the NFL,” she wrote. “It is so fulfilling, and such a nice reset in our marriage, not to mention a perfect time to connect with other like-minded couples in the NFL.”
“He had to take my career down to the studs and make me realize that I’m more than a football player. There’s much more going on than the game of football, and for me to see that, I had to hit rock bottom, and that was it. It wasn’t just football. It was in our marriage. Emily Wilkinson was equally candid. “Our marriage was failing. “And to watch it was really hard. Mayfield added that they were also trying to have children at the time, and it was not going well. Emily later described the annual conference as a genuine reset.