Ed Rhee / Catherine McKenzie
Katherina Biskupic, top, and Laura Kostelnik Bikupic.
In the era when Green Bay was first known as Titletown, there were scores of people behind the scenes helping build that success. They had no official titles but served as everything from nutritionists to therapists.
Then again, they did have one title: Mrs.
Countless stories have been told of the legends who graced the gridiron during the Packers’ rise in the 1960s. A new book and its accompanying podcast, though, looks at some of the untold stories. Lambeau Ladies (Wisconsin Historical Society Press) puts the spotlight on players’ wives, who navigated myriad challenges of their own in the fish bowl that was Green Bay.
The book has a Packers family connection with mother-daughter co-authors Laura Kostelnik Biskupic and Katherine Biskupic. Laura’s father, Ron, was a defensive tackle for the Packers from 1961-68, a time when the team won three consecutive NFL championships (including the first two Super Bowls). She grew up surrounded by the women in the book.
“The wives always were a part of the Packer family,” Laura says. Green Bay coach Vince Lombardi valued the role the women played and believed in looking out for them. In fact, after the Packers won the first Super Bowl, he bought each wife a mink stole (the mothers of single players received one, too). His wife, Marie, was part of that, too.
“She was a coach for the women,” says Laura, a former sportswriter who also worked in education and marketing. “A few of them were intimidated by her, but a lot of them were very close to her.”
The genesis of the book, in some ways, came when Katherine was a child. The family attended a 1997 reunion of Lombardi-era Packers. Eight-year-old Katherine excitedly told her mom she got everyone’s autograph. When Laura looked at her daughter’s signature-covered hat she saw the autograph of her mother, Peggy, as well as other Packers wives. Young Katherine was in awe of them and thought they were the celebrities.
Katherine, who grew up in Appleton, is now a comedy writer in Los Angeles. She first thought a Packers wives project might make a comedy script.
“But then I thought, let’s do the research and go back and interview everybody,” she says. “So many hidden gems we never could have gotten in a script.”
The book profiles 20 Packers wives but also touches on other topics such as the Ice Bowl (the wives sipped brandy to get them through the cold), being recognized in public, appearing in commercials, race, and the challenges of building a life in a new town many had to look up on a map.
It was a fun three-year project, the authors say, but melancholy at times. In 2024, they had logged in for a much-anticipated Zoom call with Cherry Starr, wife of the Hall of Fame quarterback Bart, when Cherry’s personal assistant got on the call to say Cherry couldn’t do the interview because she wasn’t feeling well. She died shortly after. Cherry Starr has a big presence in the book nonetheless as a social organizer, confidante and a prankster. Barbara Gregg, wife of Hall of Famer Forrest Gregg, was a champion of the project and helped the writers make many connections. She too died before the book was published.
Laura Kostelnik Biskupic and Katherine Biskupic, as well as Peggy Biskupic, will appear on Oct. 16.
