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Rodgers posted some sweet reunion photos with his mom, dad, and brother Luke.
Key Points
- On July 20, Aaron Rodgers reunited with the majority of his estranged family.
- The rift became public in 2016 during his brother Jordan’s time on The Bachelorette, but it had existed since 2014.
- Rodgers has claimed the tension was in part due to his controversial views.
Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers recently made headlines when he reunited with his estranged family.
After nearly a decade of publicized tension between them, it seems that everyone is burying the hatchet. Rodgers posted a series of photos to his Instagram account, showing him all smiles while embracing his parents, Darla and Ed, and spending time with his brother Luke.
The controversial footballer’s family also includes younger brother Jordan, who triumphed on season 12 of The Bachelorette and is still married to lead JoJo Fletcher.
In the Netflix documentary Aaron Rodgers: Enigma, Rodgers got candid about his strained relationship with his family, crediting his parents with teaching him how to deal with adversity while also hinting at the specific things that led to their estrangement.
Ahead, we break down the whole Rodgers clan and the painful rift that caused their star QB son to shun them until very recently.
Rodgers’ father is a former footballer, and his mom is a retired reporter
Aaron Rodgers is a legacy player — his father, Texas-born Ed, was a college football offensive lineman and played for the Chico State Wildcats in California. After college, he became a chiropractor and married Darla, a California native, in 1980. Together, the couple had three sons.
Darla had once been a part-time reporter for the Chico Enterprise-Record newspaper, according to SportsKeeda, and has spoken about her time as a dancer and basketball player. Aaron has also talked about his parents’ steadfast religious convictions, which he’s claimed played a part in their separation.
His brothers have dabbled in the sports business as well
Aaron’s younger brother, Jordan, was the starting quarterback for his high school football team before becoming the starter at Butte College. He played two seasons there, then completed the rest of his college football career at Vanderbilt University.
In 2013, Jordan signed with the Jacksonville Jaguars as an undrafted free agent. However, he was released from his contract in July of that year and joined the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ practice squad four months later. He also had a brief stint with the Miami Dolphins, and then left the NFL entirely.
But his career in sports didn’t end there. In 2016, Jordan became a college football analyst for ESPN. He also hosted his own show, The WKND, focused specifically on the SEC.
Meanwhile, Aaron’s older brother, Luke, is a married father of two, and while he has never played professional sports, he did briefly try his hand at selling merch with Aaron’s face on it. Though the brothers had inked a deal, this arrangement apparently caused further issues between them.
Luke primarily hosts a podcast called Blurry Creatures with cohost Nate Henry. The podcast is dedicated to, per the official Instagram bio, “helping people understand strange experiences.” Episodes primarily center on cryptids, the supernatural, and other unexplained phenomena, explored through a religious lens.
His younger brother, Jordan, won The Bachelorette season 12
In 2016, Jordan Rodgers became one of 26 contestants on The Bachelorette season 12, vying for the affections of then-25-year-old real estate developer Joelle “JoJo” Fletcher. Jordan ended up winning the show and proposing to Fletcher, whom he’s still married to today.
Even to the happy couple, it’s “weird” that they ended up meeting on a reality dating show, as they told PEOPLE in 2023.
“It’s just wild,” explained Fetcher. “We always look back and think, we cannot believe we met the way we did. I can’t believe we’ve been together seven years. I can’t believe we’re sitting here.”
“We were taking a walk in the neighborhood,” Rodgers added, “and we’re like, ‘How weird is it that we met on a dating show?’”
They were engaged for six years before finally tying the knot on May 14, 2022, following two postponements due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They welcomed a daughter on Dec. 23, 2025.
Rodgers was estranged from his family for years
The rift between Rodgers and his family went public in 2016, during Jordan’s season of The Bachelorette. The younger Rodgers brother revealed to Fletcher during their televised courtship that Aaron was estranged from their family.
“It’s just the way he’s chosen to do life,” Jordan explained on the show. “I chose to stay close with my family and my parents and my brother [Luke].”
Meanwhile, in 2017, Ed confirmed to the New York Times that Rodgers had not spoken to the family since 2014, simply saying, “Fame can change things.” However, Ed noted that he was still optimistic they could work it all out someday.
Tensions continued to flare through some social media feuds, but Rodgers did ultimately reach out to his parents again and had spent time with them for his 35th birthday.
But their relationship went downhill once again when Rodgers made some dicey comments about his parents’ religion in 2020. On his then-girlfriend Danica Patrick’s Pretty Intense podcast, he said of his upbringing, “Most people that I knew, church was just... you just had to go.”
He explained that he’d sought out a “different type of spirituality,” ultimately disavowing the Christianity of his upbringing. “I don’t know how you can believe in a God who wants to condemn most of the planet to a fiery hell,” he continued. “What type of loving, sensitive, omnipresent, omnipotent being wants to condemn his beautiful creation to a fiery hell at the end of all this?”
At the time, a source told PEOPLE that the Rodgers family was “dismayed” by what Rodgers had said, and viewed it as a “slap in the face.”
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Rodgers wasn’t present at Jordan and Fletcher’s wedding in 2022, and he’d go on to discuss his family issues in his Netflix documentary, Aaron Rodgers: Enigma, where he talked about how his controversial opinions have often complicated his close relationships.
“At times when you have some dysfunction or some separation in your family life, you have to kind of reparent yourself and give yourself what you didn’t get or wanted to hear more of when you were a kid, and I think for me, I just wanted to hear, ‘I’m proud of you,’” he said.
However, it seems that things are finally on the mend between Rodgers and the rest of his family, as the sweet Instagram carousel posted on July 20 shows him spending time with his mother, father, and brother Luke, as well as Luke’s children. And while Jordan was not present in the photos, it seems that all is well: Both he and Fletcher liked the post.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
