“I WAS WITH HIM BEFORE HE WAS ANYTHING”: THE IDENTITY TALK OF FOOTBALL WIVES Deana Simonetto ABSTRACT Drawing on interviews with football wives from the Canadian Football League (CFL), this article examines how these women define their personal identity through their talk about being married to a pro football player. Using the concept of courtesy identity and Anderson and Snow’s (1987) conceptualization of identity talk, this chapter explains the processes in which these women claim a courtesy identity of a football wife. I identify two strate- gies these women use to construct their identity: distancing from stereotypes and envisioning self as his teammate. I argue that women performed this verbal identity work in pursuit of legitimizing their courtesy identity of a foot- ball wife. They accomplish this by distancing self from a stereotypical, antici- pated social identity of the football wife as a “gold digger” or naïve woman and then working up another socially positive and normative one that they are supportive women who have worked alongside their husband and are part of their career. I conclude by summarizing the findings and argue that by con- structing themselves as devoted football wives, they uphold these idealized images of traditional masculinity and femininity in professional sports. Keywords: Identity talk; athlete’s wives; sports marriages INTRODUCTION Traditionally, the act of marriage symbolizes an identity transition. Women change their name by taking their husband’s last name, Mrs (husband’s last The Interaction Order Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 50, 181À196 Copyright r 2019 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-2396/doi:10.1108/S0163-239620190000050009 181