NFL star-turned-TV personality Michael Strahan is a proud father of four.
The “Good Morning America” co-host shares his eldest children, Tanita and Michael Jr., with his first wife, Wanda Hutchins, to whom he was married from 1992 to 1996.
He later welcomed twins Isabella and Sophia after marrying his second wife, Jean Muggli, in 1999. The former couple had a contentious divorce in 2006 that ended with Michael coughing up $15.3 million.
“My kids give me strength,” the doting dad told People in 2016. “I love being with the kids. To me it’s all about family, now more than anything.”
Although Tanita and Michael Jr. grew up in a different household than their half-siblings, Michael said the foursome have grown “very close” as they’ve gotten older.
“You worry how the kids will mix and blend, but brothers and sisters are brothers and sisters regardless of different mothers,” he explained.
In 2024, the former New York Giants player revealed that Isabella had been diagnosed with brain cancer.
She underwent emergency surgery to remove a malignant brain tumor known as medulloblastoma the day before her 19th birthday.
Read on to learn more about the Strahan kids.
Tanita Strahan
Michael welcomed his eldest child with Hutchins on Nov. 10, 1991, in Germany.
Although she spent her early years in Houston, she moved back to Deutschland with her mother when Hutchins split from the former defensive end in 1996.
“I’ve never been the type of person to be starstruck,” Tanita told People in 2016, noting that her time in Europe kept her “grounded.”
“Growing up in Germany, no one cared about stuff like that,” she added.
Tanita eventually returned to the States to attend high school in Houston before moving to Los Angeles, where she earned a degree in design and visual communication at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising.
She now describes herself as an illustrator and a visual artist on social media. She works with mediums like acrylic, watercolor, ink, graphic design and photography.
Michael previously revealed his eldest daughter is quite similar to him.
“She has a very strong personality, but a silent strong personality,” he told New York Family in 2013.
“She’s not going to be one to walk into a room and make it all about her. She definitely has an opinion, and she’s very smart, and she knows what she wants, which I love about her.”
Michael Strahan Jr.
Michael welcomed his only son, Michael Anthony Strahan Jr., with Hutchins on Sept. 12, 1994.
Along with his older sister, Michael Jr. was raised in Germany with their mother until he was 11 before relocating back to Texas.
He is notoriously private; however, he shared with People in 2016 that he is “fluent but rusty” in the German language and even had the country’s eagle tattooed on his arm because of how much it meant to him.
The ex-footballer, for his part, said he was “constantly on planes” when Tanita and Michael were growing across the pond.
“I think a lot of times when you split, people assume that the mother is supposed to take responsibility for the kids. But from day one, it was very important for me to be active, to be a part of their life,” he told the magazine.
“I was constantly on planes and phones. And it’s very hard — of course it’s hard with them being in Germany. But one thing I learned is, you make time for what you want to make time for.”
Michael Jr. went on to attend the University of Texas at San Antonio and eventually moved to New York.
“He’s a very particular young man. He’s very smart, too,” Michael said of his son in the 2013 New York Family interview.
“He likes to say to me, ‘Dad, you’re smart, but you cannot challenge me in the fields of math and science.'”
Isabella Strahan
Muggli gave birth to twins Isabella and Sophia on Oct. 28, 2004.
The pair grew up splitting their time between North Dakota and North Carolina, where their mother lived after her 2006 divorce.
“The twins live a crazy life,” Michael said in 2016.
“One time they flew out to DC and interviewed the first lady for ‘GMA.’ Then the next day their mom was sending me a video of them riding horses and splashing around in a muddy corn field,” he said.
While chatting with New York Family, the longtime ABC personality described Isabella as the calmer twin.
“I’d say she’s more playful, very chill, never gets very upset or fired up. She’s very ‘it is what it is,'” he explained.
Isabella attended high school in New York City, where she launched her modeling career by walking in a Sherri Hill fashion show.
After graduating in 2023, she headed to the University of Southern California. However, her studies were quickly interrupted when she was diagnosed with brain cancer that October.
She joined her dad for an emotional “GMA” segment in January 2024, during which she recalled experiencing headaches at the start of her freshman year of college.
After undergoing a slew of tests, including an MRI, she was rushed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where doctors informed her she had a “fast-growing, four-centimeter tumor” that was larger than a golf ball.
“It just didn’t feel real,” Michael said of the ordeal.
Despite a few lingering side effects from her radiation treatment, Isabella said she was “feeling good” after her emergency surgery.
Sophia Strahan
Sophia is an avid equestrian who spent time riding horses on her mother’s property in Wilmington, NC, before moving to New York for high school.
Michael described Sophia as “very curious.”
“They’re both very smart; they love to read all these things I never thought of reading when I was 7 or 8 years old. And they do it because they’re generally interested in it, which is amazing to me,” he said of his twin girls in 2013.
A few years later, the “$100,000 Pyramid” host recalled doing whatever it took to spend time with the pair after his divorce from their mom.
“When you’re a single father with 4-month-old kids, and you gotta be with them all the time, it taught me that there’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said in 2016.
“I can do it. I look back on that as one of the most fulfilling times of my life. And I look at my kids now, and it makes me happy because I know it paid off in my relationship with them.”
In 2022, Michael spoke candidly about sending his two youngest kids off to college.
“I cannot wait for them to go … but it’s actually a bittersweet thing,” he told Yahoo!
“The bitter part is, of course, I’m gonna miss my kids when they’re gone. But the sweet part is that they get a chance to grow and become adults.”
The Duke University student was also on hand to support her twin after Isabella was rushed into emergency surgery to remove a brain tumor.
Isabella credited Sophia with helping her learn how to walk again.
