A s the wife of OU head football coach Bob Stoops, mother of three and Mary Kay businesswoman, Carol Stoops knows what it's like to be busy.

"It can be a crazy, crazy, busy life, but that's me," Stoops said. "I wouldn't have it any other way."

Stoops was born Carol Davidson in Cresco, Iowa, on May 23, 1964. She majored in elementary education at the University of Iowa, where she met Bob Stoops toward the end of her freshman year, she said.

"I met him one time and told my mom that he was the guy I was going to marry," Stoops said.

In July of 1988, after five years of dating, she married Bob Stoops in her hometown. Stoops said she moved with her husband from place to place as he pursued his coaching career, from Kent State in Kent, Ohio, to Kansas State in Manhattan, Kan., to Florida State in Tallahassee, Fla., and finally to OU four football seasons ago.

"We have had a journey like anyone else," Stoops said in a statement. "We were 4 and 7 at Kent State and went 1 and 10 our first year at Kansas State. We saved every dime for our first home and then had no furniture in it. Our kitchen table for two years was a card table and four chairs and after that it was a hand-me-down from one of Bobby's brothers."

Stoops, who lovingly refers to her husband as "Bobby," said she and her husband are very grounded.

"We are exactly the same people we were years ago," Stoops said. "We knew who we were long before Florida had success."

Stoops said she and her husband just happen to get paid well for what they love to do.

"Bobby and I determined very quickly that we would keep doing exactly what we were doing because it had nothing to do with money, but with people and to feel you're making a difference in some way," Stoops said in a statement.

Stoops said her Mary Kay business allows her to stay at home with her three children, daughter Mackenzie, 5, and identical twin sons Drake and Isaac, 3.

"She's a great wife and mother," Bob Stoops said. "Those are always her first priorities and she does a fabulous job."

Mackenzie, who is called "Mackie" or "Mack," began kindergarten this year, and blond-headed twins Drake and Isaac attend preschool on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

"I'm amazed they're mine," Stoops said. "You love something more than you ever could have imagined. It changes life forever in a wonderful way."

As wife to the ever-busy Bob Stoops, Stoops realizes the value of quality time the children spend with their father.

"Periodically I call over at the office, and if he's available we'll run in and see him," Stoops said. "It'll be 10 minutes, but 10 minutes of their daddy to them could be a whole day."

Stoops also tries to take the children to football practices twice a week, she said.

"He is very aware of how busy he is," Stoops said. "He makes great efforts as a dad."

She said he takes his daughter to kindergarten every morning when he's not recruiting, and sometimes calls from work to ask if she'll keep the kids up past their bedtime so he can see them when he comes home.

Stoops said she attends every football game, and flies to out-of-state games with the team. Every coach's wife at OU has the opportunity to fly to every game, which is very rare, Stoops said. When her husband coached at Kansas State, Stoops said she had to drive to every out-of-state game.

Their children do not go to most games, Stoops said.

"Mackenzie goes to a few of them with me, but the boys stay at home," she said.

Along with being a wife and mother, Stoops is a successful businesswoman with Mary Kay.

Stoops began her Mary Kay career 11 years ago when she became an independent beauty consultant with the company.

"After a short time, I realized (Mary Kay is) a great business and it became my passion and vision for the future," Stoops said.

Stoops was so successful at it that she quit her job as a math teacher to pursue Mary Kay full time, she said. Within one year, Stoops had moved up from consultant to director, she said.

Although "the financial rewards are great," Stoops said her Mary Kay business "very very quickly became far more than money."

"I would do what I do now for free, and yet I'm paid very well," Stoops said. "(Mary Kay is) about women and watching them grow and providing for them what I think is a better way of life."

Today Stoops has risen to the position of executive senior sales director, with a unit 180 people strong, she said. Stoops drives a pink Cadillac, her sixth free car through Mary Kay. She also has taken three free trips through Mary Kay, to Scotland, Ireland and Vienna, Austria, she said.

Stoops is currently working to meet her goal of building a new national area of directors and consultants in Oklahoma by June 2003, she said. In order to do that, Stoops will have to help other women rise to her current position, directorship, she said. If Stoops has her way and establishes a new national area, she will then become a national sales director, she said.

"Everything's lining up in place," Stoops said. "It's definitely all happening."

Coach Bob Stoops said Mary Kay is an incredible business to be in.

"I'm...very proud of what she's been able to accomplish as a businesswoman, without ever taking away anything from our family," Bob Stoops said.

In light of her success, Stoops said she never envisioned herself where she is today.

"I always pictured climbing the corporate ladder," she said. "I never thought I was going to get married or have kids."

Despite being the wife of OU's head football coach, Stoops said she does not see herself as a celebrity at all.

"I'm just me," she said. "You feel exactly the same but people perceive you differently. It's actually a scary thing when people think you're too great. You don't ask to be put on a pedestal, but they put you there, and then they criticize you."

The life of a coach's wife is very unique, Stoops said.

"My mom or sisters will tell me, 'You do not have a normal life, Carol,' but to me it is, because it's all I know," Stoops said. "It's a very different life. It's a wonderful life."
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