By David Laurell

The grandson of a Hungarian-born grandfather who, like his father, worked in the coal and steel industries of Western Pennsylvania, Joe Namath was born and raised in Beaver Falls, where he excelled in high school sports. Lured by numerous colleges, he chose the University of Alabama, where the Crimson Tide’s legendary head coach, Paul “Bear” Bryant, called his recruitment: “The best coaching decision I ever made.”

Drafted by both the National Football League and the upstart American Football League, Namath ultimately elected to sign with the New York Jets for a then-unprecedented annual salary of $427,000.

The American Football League Rookie of the Year in 1965, he became the first professional quarterback to pass for 4,000 yards in a season and was a four-time American Football League All-Star. A flamboyant and trendsetting phenomenon known for his charisma, bravado, long hair, Fu-Manchu mustache, white cleats, pantyhose commercial, keeping company with a bevy of beautiful blondes, television and feature film appearances and the controversy that brewed over his part-ownership of a New York nightclub – Bachelors III – Namath lived a jet-setting lifestyle that inspired his teammate, Sherman Plunkett, to tag him with the nickname – Broadway Joe.

On January 12, 1969, three days after making national headlines by uttering the now-famous line: “We’re gonna win the game. I guarantee it,” Broadway Joe became Super Joe by backing up his boast and leading the Jets to an upset win over the Baltimore Colts in the third World Championship Game. He also earned Most Valuable Player honors, induction into the hallowed halls of Canton’s Pro Football Hall of Fame and a secure place in history as one of the most legendary and beloved icons of American sports and popular culture.

It’s early afternoon in the kitchen of a Florida home as the final drop of a freshly made brew has just dripped into the carafe below. The white-wainscoted walls of the kitchen, as with most rooms in the sprawling bay-front home, are lined with photos of two beautiful children. The refrigerator is adorned with their crayon creations of a multi-colored pup, dolphin and tropical fish.

As the man of the house pours his coffee, a shelf above his head holds a New Parent First Aid Kit. From the adjacent Florida room porch, which joins the house’s two wings, a little Pomeranian named Rico passes a playpen filled with colored balls, stops, and then sits up on his back legs in front of his master, who takes a seat at a long, weathered-wood table overlooking the house’s manicured hedges and front lawn.

For this visitor from “Life After 50” who has been invited to join him, there is a momentary flash of incongruity. Not only is there no llama rug, well-stocked bar or any other trappings associated with a jet-setting superstar athlete in sight, a baby’s booster seat has to be moved to make room to sit across from the man who once epitomized the quintessential swinging bachelor – Broadway Joe Willie Namath.

“It’s very out-of-the-ordinary that I haven’t had a bite of food today, because I’m religious about putting something in my body,” says Namath as he takes a sip of coffee. “I am very conscientious about what I eat. When people ask me if there is anything I would have done differently back in my playing days, I always say that I wish I had eaten better. Back then, we didn’t know about nutrition. I would get up for a game, say in Buffalo with that brutal weather, and I would have a pre-game meal of a cup of coffee and chewing tobacco. It never dawned on me at the time, but years later I would think, ‘What was my body working on in the third and fourth quarters of those games?’ ”

Asked what changed his views on the benefits of proper eating, Namath smiles. “One night, I caught Johnny Carson’s show and he had a lady on who was 100 years old. Johnny asked her what she attributed her longevity and great health to and she said: ‘Oh Johnny – you are what you eat, ya know.’ Well that hit me and really sunk in. I’ve also been lucky enough to have two other ladies in my life that are centenarians. The one woman, whose grandson is my orthopedist, believed you should not drink liquids when you eat and let the enzymes digest the food. I used to drink four glasses of tea at lunch and four more at dinner. I put a lot of liquid in my body in college – and then, as time went by, a lot of that other kind of liquid, too. But it made sense to me to hear someone over 100 talk about not taking liquid with food and I paid attention to that. We’re such creatures of habit, but we can change our habits, and I got over the habit of drinking with meals.”

Another eating habit that Namath changed came about in 1977, while visiting with the then-owner of the Los Angeles Rams, Carroll Rosenbloom. “He changed my life without even trying,” Namath explains. “I had gone out to L.A. to talk with him about playing with the Rams. He and I were at his house in Bel-Air, having lunch, and I reached for the salt shaker and he said: ‘Joseph! You put that down right now!’ Well, I used to carry a salt shaker in my pocket when I was growing up in Beaver Falls. We would pick apples and pears and I put salt on everything – radishes, watermelon. Mr. Rosenbloom told me salt was one of the worst evils we put in our bodies. He said he had just left the hospital with high blood pressure and a coronary situation. So I stopped using the salt shaker and haven’t used it to this day – although when I go to a movie I will put some on the popcorn.”

Namath, who will turn 69 this May, says he usually cooks his own meals and eats at home 99 percent of the time. “There are a couple of reasons for that,” he reveals. “First, I know what I’m eating, and also, I enjoy the comfort of eating at home.”

Along with maintaining good eating habits, Namath says he has always kept up a good physical-fitness routine. “I swim and do cardiovascular work,” he says “I don’t go overboard, but I do take care of myself without being a fanatic.”

Having earned a reputation for liking his female companions blonde and his Johnny Walker Red, today the four most important women in his life – his daughters Jessica and Olivia and his granddaughters, four-year-old Natalia and Jemma, who turned one this past year, are all brunettes, and he doesn’t touch a drop of anything stronger than a cherry juice supplement he drinks on a daily basis.

“I never felt as if I had a problem with alcohol when I was in my 20s,” says Namath. “My dad wasn’t an alcoholic and my mother never drank. I remember my first drink, when I was four or five years old. My grandpa gave me a little sip of his Rock and Rye. As for drinking Johnny Walker Red – I never drank the stuff until I picked up a safety blitz in Boston. I was really hurting. I couldn’t sit on the airplane coming home and when I got back to my apartment, I still couldn’t sit down. Joe Hirsch was my roommate back then. He was a horse-racing writer and when he saw the pain I was, in he handed me a Scotch and said: ‘Here Joey.’ Well, it was the worst stuff I ever smelled or tasted. But I drank it to get out of the pain and then continued to drink it for five more years. I developed a taste for it and it became a routine, another habit, and an escape. During that time of my life, I thought I was on top of everything, but I had all kinds of stuff going on and people coming at me from everywhere – the drinking became an escape from the craziness.”

Today, Namath has not had a drink in over nine years. “I originally stopped drinking back in 1987. I was challenged by my ex-wife, Tatiana. I made a promise to her and I was terrified of breaking that promise and getting hell,” he says with a laugh. “I told her if I couldn’t stop drinking, I would check into a place to help me stop. Well, for 13 years I didn’t have a sip. I was what is called a dry drunk. I use that term because years later, I messed up with my behavior at a football game with Suzy Kolber (ESPN reporter) when I said: “I’d like to kiss you.” That was a real disappointment to me and to my family. I was so disappointed in myself that I stopped drinking again and this time I went and got an education at a substance abuse treatment center. That was where I learned the term dry drunk. I also learned that without the education you just don’t have the real understanding of how to handle it. It’s not just copping an attitude that you’re not going to do it. Getting the education helped me – not just physically, but spiritually.”

Having been raised a Catholic, Namath says he was always confused, conflicted and left without a real understanding of his perception of God and the teachings of the church. “It was really frustrating for me,” he reveals. “But when I went to get help for the alcohol, I also learned how individual and personal your spirituality can be, and should be – just between you and your maker. That changed my life. I’ll go outside in the evening and look up at the sky and talk to God and have a true sense of understanding of forgiveness and know he will not send me to hell for eternity because I may think about something or because I miss mass or mess up in some way or another. I’m a better person for having sought professional help and I’m thrilled that 22 out of the last 24 years I have been sober. It will be nine years this January 12 (2012) and I tell ya, I believe – no, I know – if I was still drinking, I wouldn’t even be here.”

While Namath freely admits to having used alcohol to help him thorough the pain of his injuries, he was determined, from a young age, to never allow himself to fall into the grasp of painkillers or drugs. “When I had my first knee surgery, the pain mediation they used was morphine,” he explains. “Well I almost lost my mind coming off that medication. I felt like my insides were coming out and it scared me so bad, I knew I would never get involved with drugs. I had been in constant pain since I first tore ligaments in my knee in 1964, and over the years, I’ve had all sorts of medications prescribed that gave me relief from pain, but some of them were giving me thoughts that I never thought of and it scared me.”

After years of pain, Namath finally came to a point at which there was no other choice other than to undergo knee replacement surgery. “That came when I fell in the backyard one day,” he explains. “I just lost all stability and the doctor recommended the replacements. Since then, for the most part, I feel great, and when it comes to dealing with pain, I’ve gone the homeopathic route – honey and cinnamon and wild cherry juice that is given to race horses to stop inflammation. Yes, there are some aches and pains now and then, but I’ve never given my pain much thought since I went on a USO tour after our Super Bowl season. We had stopped at a hospital in Hawaii on our way back from the Far East. The last kid we visited was a quadruple amputee. After visiting with him, I said I would never complain about my pains again, because it is so minor as to what many people go through.”

While Namath gives little thought to his aches and pains, he is quick to say he gives a lot of thought to the future his two daughters and granddaughters will face. “I have a fear for my children and grandchildren,” he says shaking his head. “I think of what the world and society was like when I was growing up, and then look at what I see today. I’ll tell ya, it scares me. I wonder where we are headed. I’m sure there were ugly things going on in the world back when I was a kid that we just never heard about. Today, the media has changed quite a bit and I think we are getting a lot of the wrong kind of news. I get cranky at times and Jessica tells me it’s because I’m watching too much news. I was in a routine of watching the news as I made dinner and she was right. I do think we should keep up with what’s going on, but unfortunately today’s media constantly feeds us the controversial ugliness. I hear about things and there is a fear that I won’t be around all the time for my family. I worry about their future. Competition is keen and there will be even more when they get older. I have tried to instill in them how important it is to have habits that are conducive to growth and contributing in some way so that they can make a living and feel good about what they will be doing and be productive. I am really proud of my daughters. Jessica lives five minutes from me and is doing really well and Olivia is on a good path. She is attending the Fashion Institute of Design in Los Angeles.”

Almost on cue, while talking about his family, Jessica arrives at the front door with Jemma and her Cavalier King Charles spaniel, Lady, in tow. “Hey Cubba,” says Namath as he embraces Jessica and then picks up his granddaughter. “And how is Miss Jemma today?” he asks as his focus narrows solely to the beautiful little girl he holds in his arms.

As Lady takes up a romp with Rico, Jemma toddles after them into the den that also serves as Namath’s office. He once again takes his place behind the table and smiles. “I’ve been giving a lot of thought to my family and their future lately,” he says. “Until my girls were born, I never gave thought to the future. I remember once when I was in the Jets locker room and our team’s orthopedic doctor told me that one day I would need artificial knee joints. I asked him when and he said” ‘Oh, in 20 or 25 years.’ I said: ‘I don’t care! Are you kidding me? I can’t think that far ahead.’ But now at this age, I do think about the future and about relating to my daughters and trying to explain life’s experiences and the education we get, if we’re lucky, from those experiences. Learning is such an ongoing thing. We think we know what’s happening when we’re young, but, oh man, how much more there is to learn as long as we can keep on going.”

As a part of his belief in lifelong learning, Namath, who left the University of Alabama 15 credits shy of graduating in 1965, enrolled in the university’s external degree program in 2006 at the urging of his daughter Jessica, who also attended Alabama. On December 15, 2007, Namath earned his B.A. degree in interdisciplinary studies at the age of 64.

Asked about those who instilled life lessons and wisdom in him, Namath credits his parents, coaches and the men who co-owned the Jets during his playing days – Sonny Werblin and Leon Hess. He then quickly adds that he hasn’t gained anywhere near enough wisdom. “That’s for sure,” he laughs. “I’ve never felt that I don’t have a need to continue to grow and learn. After what happened to me in my mid 20s, I remember thinking I would never be surprised by anything again, because I thought I had seen it all. Well, was I wrong or what? I promise you I was wrong! Throughout my life, I am constantly confused and surprised and taken aback by things.”

While always known to be a legendary ladies’ man, Namath even concedes that he has been, and is still, confused, surprised and taken aback by the female species. “I was a bachelor till I was 41. I had never lived with a lady before my wife. That taught me how little I know about females. Marriage and having children is a blessing, but it’s also a test. I don’t know how going through a divorce and raising my girls I could have handled it without my spiritually. I can’t tell you how many times I have walked outside, just talking to my maker asking: ‘Why don’t they understand – my wife and my daughters.’ It took me getting married and having two daughters to realize and understand – honest to God – females are just wired differently than guys.”

While not always on the same wavelength with the ladies in his life, Namath is quick to proudly state that he has a fabulous relationship with his daughters. “That’s not hard to do,” he says. “Sure there are disagreements. But when I deal with my girls, I always try to think about what I was going through when I was their age. There have been times we have disagreed and rubbed one another the wrong way. But we always have the basic unconditional love between us. We have to be reminded of that from time to time when we go off the handle. But when we don’t see eye to eye, we always give it a second and third effort to understand where we are coming from. I have to do that because I’m a guy who, on so many occasions during my life, stepped out of line in so many ways. I know I haven’t survived by any skill of my own. I’ve had a lot of luck and two guardian angels – being a Gemini, I’ve got two of them, ya know,” he says with a wink. “All my escapades in New York when I was in my 20s – God almighty – I thought I was in control, but I wasn’t. I was just lucky.”

Along with his daughters and granddaughters, the other members of Namath’s family that bring him joy and love are his dogs. “Oh yeah, there‘s a lot of love when it comes to the dogs,” he says. “I’ve always had dogs, and every time I lost one, I swore I would never have another because the pain of losing them was so bad. But you live and learn that where there is love, there will be sadness.”

Among Namath’s canine brood is the aforementioned Rico, along with a Weimaraner named Stella, a yellow lab named Leo, and Alexander, who is a blue-tip heeler and Corgi mix that came from an Alabama shelter. “Jessica has a boucheron named Shay, and Lady the Cavalier King Charles, and she also has a little poodle mix named Rufus,” says Namath. “Olivia has a mixed-breed dog she rescued from the shelter and a cat she found as a little kitten that was sick. She found her in an alley and named her Dash. She had to have an operation to fix her intestines and that surgery cost more than my dad made in a year working in the steel mills. But she lived and healed and is doing great. It’s all about love with the dogs. They are so very special.”

Asked what his life is like today, Namath says his main goal is to try to stay healthy. “Our health is our most taken for granted luxury,’ he says. “It is for all of us and yet, until something happens, it doesn’t sink in as to what a precious gift it is.”

He is also heavily involved in a venture he has embraced with gusto – BroadwayJoe.tv – an interactive website in which Namath regularly updates his fans on his thoughts about the state of college and pro football, the NFL Draft, or anything else that’s on his mind. “I wanted to learn more about the internet and social media and Jessica was instrumental in guiding me and working with me,” says Namath, who also holds a high-profile presence on Facebook and Twitter. “BroadwayJoe.tv is a team effort that along with Jessica, includes my team – Angelo Mandarano, Joe Blaney and Jimmy Walsh. It’s been lot of fun and I enjoy having a connection with the fans.”

As for his thoughts on the passing of calendar pages, Namath, who plans on living past 100, says that attitude is vitally important, because it plays into everything. “However, that is easier said than done,” he cautions. “Every day, our attitude is tested by something or someone. We can start the day with the best attitude and it can quickly shift gears by something that happens. So it’s always a matter of getting yourself back in the right flow. Our attitudes can really take a beating and it’s not enough to simply say you’re going to have a good attitude. We have to constantly keep working and reminding ourselves to assess and understand how different things could be, and what we have to be grateful for, and how we have the power to go from one place to another from an attitude standpoint. If you say you can’t do that, well then you won’t. What did Richard Bach say: ‘Argue for your limitations and they’re yours.’ My attitude is good because I work at it. I know I am the only one who can control it and I know I feel so much better when my attitude is good. It all comes together when we understand and accept that, ultimately, we are the ones in control of it.”

Just before this guest (an unabashed lifelong fan) asks if he would be willing to fulfill a dream and join him on the front lawn to toss a football around (a request he enthusiastically agrees to) Namath is posed a final question: Does he fully understand the love that so many people harbor for him?

“I’ve learned to appreciate it,” he says. “My dad was always outgoing with people. He always had a lot of respect for people regardless of their color, their work or whatever. I always took notice of that when I was a kid and as I have matured, I have come to care about people and their feelings. There was a time – when I was a young athlete – I never gave it any thought. Sometimes, being in the public eye, you want to have some quiet time and there have been times when the old nervous system would get the best of me and I would be a little testy with people. But I have come to appreciate the connection I have with people as a joy. I appreciate it because I know all too well that things could be very different. So I cherish it, because it’s important to me.”

Namath looks out towards where Jemma is sitting on the floor between the two dogs. “I know how lucky I am,” he says while never taking his twinkling eyes off the little girl. “I know that better than anyone, because I know how many mistakes I’ve made. I’ve lived my life and know where I’ve sidestepped things and fouled up, and yet, I’m still healthy and full of love for my God and family and my dogs and the people who have shown so much love to me over the years. So yes, to answer your question, I really do feel the love that is out there.”

He picks up the football his guest has brought and wraps his hand around it with a huge grin. “Now let’s get out there and have a little fun, huh.”

David Laurell is the editor in chief of "Life After 50." You may reach him at davidl@lifeafter50.com