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Kolb: Toughest guy was a gal
Published: 4/27/2009 9:36 AM
Last Modified: 4/27/2009 9:36 AM

Owasso’s Jon Kolb won four Super Bowls in 13 seasons with the Pittsburgh Steelers. He wanted to talk about the toughest person he ever met.
Was it Jack Lambert? Lambert is, after all, a guy who seemed to have fangs on a famous Sports Illustrated cover. Lambert told SI that quarterbacks should wear dresses.
Kolb suggested Lambert wasn’t even the toughest Steeler. Kolb said nobody wanted to fight Larry Brown or Donnie Shell or Tunch Ilkin.
But the toughest person Kolb ever met wasn’t any of them. It’s a gal named Mary Ann.
Kolb, who still resides in the Pittsburgh area, puts his master’s degree in exercise science to work at Specialty Orthopedics. One of the people in his wellness program is Mary Ann, who is battling Lou Gehrig’s disease.
“We think of people like athletes that are tough,” he said. “But Mary Ann is 105 pounds and the toughest person I think I have ever met.”
Kolb, an Oklahoma State alum, is a proud dad. He said one of his sons is a state champion wrestler who just signed with Nebraska. He said he initially felt “conflicted” about the Nebraska thing, but now wears a Husker hat to work.
Kolb’s family has a new reason to be proud of dad. Kolb, who said he still has friends in Owasso, will return to Oklahoma in August to be enshrined in the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame.
In a recent telephone interview, Kolb was asked for his best story about himself. He paused for a moment and offered this:
“The last two or three years, Terry Bradshaw and I were roommates. I remember when we were in Cleveland and the phone rang and Terry picks up the phone. It was my wife’s sister. She said ‘tell Jon his wife’s water broke and we’re taking her to the hospital.’ Terry got so excited. Terry, if you see him on TV, he is real excitable. And he hung up the phone and he’s running around saying ‘oh, my gosh, we’ve got to boil water or something.’ And we’re in Cleveland. I said ‘what was that all about?’ And he’s stuttering.
“One thing about Terry, it was really important to protect him. We didn’t want to give up any sacks early in the game, until he had thrown a touchdown. Once he had thrown a touchdown, we were good. Then he had his confidence and he had his game ready to go, but not early in the game.
“But Terry was all like he was when he gets flustered. Then we played Cleveland and they had a phone on the sideline to the labor room. Every time I would come to the sideline, they would say the contractions are seven minutes apart or whatever.”
FYI, Kolb also returned to Oklahoma last year to speak at Owasso’s sports banquet. He said it was an honor.



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Tulsa World sports writer Jimmie Tramel is a former class president at Locust Grove High School. He graduated magna cum laude from Northeastern State University with a journalism degree and, while attending college, was sports editor of the Pryor Daily Times. He joined the Tulsa World on Oct. 17, 1989, the same day an earthquake struck the World Series. He is the OSU basketball beat writer and a columnist and feature writer during football season. In 2007, he wrote a book about Oklahoma State football with former Cowboy coach Pat Jones.

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