Cris Collinsworth first met his wife, Holly Bankemper while she was a cheerleader for the University of Kentucky. They both attended the University of Cincinnati College of Law in the late 1980s and early 1990s, according to The U.S. Sun. The couple married in 1989. Bankemper is still a practicing attorney in the Cincinnati area. “I have a really strong wife,” Collinsworth told Cincinnati Magazine back in 2001. “It’s amazing all that she can handle, particularly with as much as I’m away from home.”
The couple share four children and two grandchildren. Their children have experienced similar success in sports, with Austin playing football for the University of Notre Dame, Ashley running track for Harvard University, and their other children, Katie and Jac, also taking a turn in sports journalism, as Bustle reported.
Bankemper has largely remained out of the limelight over the years, perhaps due in large part to the family’s small hometown of Fort Thomas, Kentucky, located just outside of Cincinnati, Ohio. During an interview with the Cincinnati Inquirer, Collinsworth compared Fort Thomas to the fictional small town on “The Andy Griffith Show,” Mayberry. “You could take this town and put it out in the middle of Montana somewhere, and it would be the same sort of feel to Fort Thomas, and yet in five minutes you’re in downtown Cincinnati,” Collinsworth said, per Bustle. “But you really feel separated from that enough that you feel like you’re living in Mayberry.”
