Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh is one of the most successful active head coaches in the NFL, proven by his 172 career victories and his being one of eight active coaches who have a Super Bowl championship in tow.
Harbaugh will soon get his crack at exacting revenge on the very team that ended his second Lamar Hunt Trophy pursuit last season, the Kansas City Chiefs, as the league kicks off the 2024 season in Arrowhead Stadium on Thursday, Sept. 5.
Before the much-anticipated rematch of the AFC title game, Harbaugh will have a prominent figure in his corner, his longtime wife. Time to dive into who she is.
Who Is John Harbaugh’s Wife, Ingrid Harbaugh?
Much like the head coach standing on the opposite sideline of Harbaugh on Thursday, Andy Reid, the Ravens’ leader has been with the same soulmate since the 1980s.
According to multiple sources, John and his wife, Ingrid, got together sometime in the mid-1980s. Around the same time, John’s coaching career was just underway. It was the first stop on his multi-faceted coaching journey, overseeing both running backs and outside linebackers at Western Michigan University.
Ingrid’s affiliation with the university is unclear, but she was born in 1967. Harbaugh’s coaching tenure with the Western Michigan Broncos spanned between 1984 and 1987.
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Given that she was in a collegiate atmosphere in her late teens and early 20s, it seems safe to surmise that she was a co-ed and eventual alum of the university where Harbaugh’s coaching career got underway.
With that in mind, few could dispute that Western Michigan University was a foundational location for both halves of the Harbaugh couple. After all, it’s where John started coaching and met his eventual wife, and it’s where Ingrid got an education and met her eventual husband, not to mention the father of her child.
John and Ingrid were officially wed in 1991. They welcomed a daughter, Alison Harbaugh, into the world a few years later. Much like her father (not to mention John’s brother, Jim), she’s demonstrated some athletic chops of her own.
Alison spent several years on Notre Dame’s women’s lacrosse team. In that time, she appeared in 16 games, registering two goals and three assists. She transferred to the University of South Florida ahead of her upcoming senior season in 2024.
Not only have John and Ingrid watched their children grow in their athletic careers, but their relationship involved one other milestone: the Ravens head coach’s 60th birthday in 2022. She helped put together a surprise bash for her husband that went viral on social media.
Some of our friends had a special surprise for Harbs' 60th… pic.twitter.com/ufOpXEQCay
— Baltimore Ravens (@Ravens) September 23, 2022
While Ingrid is a proud backer of her husband’s coaching career, the two have their own venture they run together.
Details on Foundation Ravens Couple Runs
Ingrid is undoubtedly just as supportive of her daughter’s athletic career as her husband’s coaching career. She’s also supportive of her community. She makes half of The John and Ingrid Harbaugh Family Foundation, a charitable organization that has made a wide variety of generous donations through the years:
“The John and Ingrid Harbaugh Family Foundation is a private foundation that primarily funds scholarship, fellowship, dismantle child sex trafficking, support for ALS foundation, religious and education programs/services for wounded veterans, as well as meals to end hunger. It made 21 grants last year to various organizations including Athletes In Action. The foundation is located in Owings Mills, Md.”
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Ingrid will now watch her husband re-pursue his attempt at getting the Ravens back into Super Bowl contention — a first since the early 2010s period.
Interestingly, Harbaugh has only produced one AFC Championship Game run since the 2012 season — which was his last conference title before winning Super Bowl 47 over his younger brother Jim and the San Francisco 49ers. Last season’s AFC title game ended an 11-season dry spell of playing for a trip to the Super Bowl.
Now, Harbaugh and the Ravens will get a chance to send a message across the league by attempting to knock off the back-to-back champs to start the ’24 season, and Ingrid will once again be on her husband’s side to watch.