Aaron Rodgers Talks In-Depth About Wife Brittani for First Time

Aaron Rodgers is detailing the years that went by between meeting and marrying his now-wife, Brittani— and all the relationships in between.

Speaking in-depth about their relationship for the first time, the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback, 42, revealed that his “biggest regret” is not proposing when they first met in 2017.

“In 2017 I met my wife, and at the time, she was leaving the States and going back to Europe. And my biggest regret is not begging her to stay or proposing right there, because that sent me right there into a tailspin of what can I be accused of as a partner in a relationship,” Rodgers told Steelers teammate Cam Heyward on the Thursday, Sept. 10 episode of Not Just Football with Cam Heyward.

Rodgers said that he met Brittani while she was living in Austin, Texas, after attending the University of Texas at Austin.

“She moved back over to Europe, we kept in touch, and there were a couple of times I thought things were going to work out, and then she got engaged, and I was like, well that’s done,” he explained.

That led him, Rodgers said, to being “emotionally unavailable.”

“I was emotionally unavailable, I think, for those seven or eight years because I met the person that had changed my life,” the NFL player, now in his 22nd season, said. “And after that, I just poured everything I had into football, and I think I got a lot out of that for sure, but I knew I was supposed to be with this one person, but we were separated by an ocean for a lot it.”

Rodgers then goes after the two women he dated before reconnecting with his now-wife: Danica Patrick, whom he dated publicly from 2018 to 2020, and Shailene Woodley, from 2021 to 2022, when they broke off their engagement.

With Patrick, a former race car driver, Rodgers claimed that there was “zero intimacy” in their relationship and how things unraveled when he didn’t want to buy another house with her in 2020 (they previously purchased a Malibu, Calif., home in 2019). Rodgers then goes on to claim that his relationship with Woodley soured shortly after he proposed because she wanted to sleep with another man before they got married.

Reps for Patrick and Woodley did not immediately return PEOPLE’s requests for comment.

For Rodgers and his now-wife, things eventually fell into place, he said.

“She was engaged, then I got engaged, and luckily, for me, we came back together,” he said.

Rodgers said he and Brittani eloped, but stopped short of sharing more when Heyward asked about his proposal.

“We eloped. It was quick, but I had a little something set up when I was over there, a surprise for her, but that’s about all I’m going to say about that,” the Super Bowl champion said.

In the interview, Rodgers also praised his wife for helping him reunite with his long-estranged family.

“My wife deserves a lot of the credit for that, just to be able to get to that point to think about having the conversations, she was a big part of that,” he said. “And not that she was pushing anything, she wasn’t. It was more and you guys can probably relate to this, when you’re loved by someone in such an unconditional, beautiful, pure way, it changes your perspective on all of your relationships around that, that becomes your anchor point. Well, if I can be made to feel like this by this person, I feel like it opens up your heart in an even deeper way that I never experienced before.”

Rodgers revealed he got married in 2025.