It was a summer’s day in 1970 when Kevin Keegan plucked up the courage to speak with a certain Jean Woodhouse at Doncaster fair.
He was 19, she 16, and the pair had been on the waltzers. The soundtrack of that summer was Mungo Jerry’s ‘In the Summertime’, and were he to take her out for fish and chips, it would’ve cost 20 to 30 pence.
By this stage Keegan was already making strides in football, an employment which entitled him to around £30 per week. He had spent two years playing for Fourth Division side Scunthorpe United and in eight months he would be off to Liverpool.
But feeling slightly bashful, a young Keegan did not try to woo his new belle with tales from the football pitch. Instead, he pitched himself as a humble steelworker, the job he took in summertime to earn a bit of extra cash. During the off-season, Scunthorpe cut his weekly wages, you see, so he had to supplement that with jobs on the steel and in a psychiatric hospital.
‘Telling them I was a footballer would have sounded too flash, even though I was an unknown playing for a small club,’ Keegan later recalled. Humility was often his way.
The ruse worked. Woodhouse was charmed – despite the fact she had a crush on Manchester United superstar George Best – and four years later they married at St Peter in Chains Catholic Church in Doncaster. The eager lovers brought the ceremony forward while he was serving a ban.
Kevin Keegan and his wife Jean Woodhouse were married for 51 years from 1974 until he died
The duo, who met on the waltzers at Doncaster fair, kept their private life out of the public eye
Their marriage lasted 51 years until his death on Monday and, despite him being one of the poster boys for English football in that time, little is known of the life they kept away from the pitch. Privacy and the protection of their daughters Laura and Sarah were paramount.
Jean didn’t take too much of an interest in the football herself, but with a self-sacrificial spirit, she followed him everywhere.
In May 1971 he moved to Liverpool for £33,000 and was inducted into Bill Shankly’s legendary team. Suddenly his basic wage was £50 per week. There, Keegan won three First Division titles and a European Cup, though their Liverpudlian stint started inauspiciously.
Keegan arrived for his debut against Nottingham Forest late because he had misjudged the severity of the traffic on the way to Anfield. That earned him the nickname Andy McDaft, but he silenced any doubters after 12 minutes with a stunning debut goal.
After six remarkable years with the Reds, Jean followed him to Hamburg, Germany, where he would twice win the Ballon d’Or prize for being the world’s best player.
Life later took them to Southampton, County Durham, the United States, Spain, and Inverkip in Scotland, and Jean was always by his side – even if she didn’t pay much attention to his sporting antics.
‘My wife Jean has always taken football with a pinch of salt,’ Keegan once told The Guardian.
‘She doesn’t ever get over-involved in it, not when I’m out of it and not when I’m in it. That is the key. After matches, if you’ve lost she knows not to say too much for about 24 hours while you get over it and if you’ve won she knows I might take her out at night.
Jean wasn’t overly interested in his footballing antics – and he even hid his career at first!
She and one of their daughters, Laura, joined Keegan as he received his OBE at Buckingham Palace in 1982
‘We decided early on that football and family should mix as seldom as possible. In our minds there was football and then there was life.’
Football was talked about so little in the home that his daughters actually thought he was a professional golfer, given how much time he dedicated to it in their seven years in Spain.
The love he and Jean shared was horse riding. She was more adept than himself but, on those rides out, they could share a peace which wasn’t afforded to him when out in public.
‘To relax, I do horse riding. My wife is keen on horses,’ he said in a television interview.
‘I can’t ride a horse to save my life. If you see me running funny on a Saturday, it’s because we’ve been for a horse ride on the Friday night!
‘Once you get on the back of a horse and get up a mountain, it’s funny, nobody wants your autograph when you’re galloping along. They want to get out of the way!’
He added: ‘I just live normal. The terrible thing about the public in a way, and I don’t mean terrible in a nasty way… you can go and talk to someone and they’ll say: “oh, he talked to me, he’s natural.”
‘Of course I’m natural! I was born the same as they were. I was brought up the same as they were. I’m just the same as they are. I think people tend to think you should be different and if you see it long enough, it could make you different.
Jean pictured outside a romany caravan near their house they shared in north Wales while Keegan was at Liverpool
Liverpool, Newcastle and England legend Keegan has died at the age of 75 after a short battle with illness
Keegan (pictured in 1977 after winning the European Cup with Liverpool) is one of the greatest players English football has ever produced
The sprawling Georgian property that was once home to footballer Kevin Keegan while he was the boss of Newcastle United in the 1990s
The property features a large white kitchen decorated with chandeliers and characterful touches
‘I enjoy meeting people very much. I enjoy meeting the fans. I just came down on the train and had half a dozen around me all the way. I’d sooner have them round me than be sat on my own twiddling my thumbs.’
The sense you get is that Kevin and Jean retained their humility even when their circumstances improved.
Keegan’s mother Doris was a domestic worker and his father, Joe, was a miner and Newcastle fan. The future England manager grew up in a home with no electricity, bathroom or inside toilet. If he wanted to watch the beautiful game which he so dearly loved, he had to go to a friend’s house to sit down in front of the TV.
When he was manager of Newcastle in the 1990s, he and Jean moved into a sprawling country pad.
The grand Georgian property in County Durham is situated on 5.4 acres of gardens in a gated community with 24-hour security and boasts a games room, pool and bar.
This expansive property was extended in Keegan’s day and has been extended again since making it now a five-bedroom home of nearly 10,000 sq ft.
It boasts a reception hall, kitchen/breakfast room, lounge, dining room, orangery, study, wine cellar and indoor swimming pool on the ground floor.
Last year it was listed for sale for £2.25million.
That’s an example of the type of property they could afford, but they never lost sight of the simple pleasures of life. In the mid-2000s they purchased a house in Inverkip, a village in Scotland’s west central Lowlands, and would take driving trips out into nature together. Local business workers knew them as regulars.
As one local recalled: ‘I met him a few times with his wife and daughter – he was a very nice man with a nice family, and you could have a laugh with him.’
Keegan died on Monday surrounded by Jean and their two girls, having been diagnosed with stage four stomach cancer in January. In sickness and in health Jean stood by his side – whether at Buckingham Palace to receive his OBE or on a candyfloss-filled summer’s day at Doncaster fair.
