Just months removed from Mike Tomlin’s exit as head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, his wife, Kiya Tomlin, said there are no hard feelings between them and the organization.
In fact, they remain great friends with the Rooney family, which owns the Steelers.
“We speak frequently,” Kiya, 52, exclusively told Us Weekly of Greta Rooney, wife of Steelers owner and president Art Rooney II.
Speaking to Us ahead of the launch of her NFL collection at the 2026 NFL Draft, Kiya said she feels that she and her husband are treated more like former players than the former head coach and wife.
“We’re still very much a part of the organization,” she said. “I consider us like alumni. Like how they bring the former players back. I think we just fall into that category.”
Mike, 54, served as Steelers head coach from 2007 to 2025, winning the Super Bowl in his second season and returning to the championship game two years later. Pittsburgh has not been to the Super Bowl since, however, and has lost in the Wild Card round in each of its last five playoff appearances.
After the team’s most recent early exit, coming in January 2026 against the Houston Texans, Mike resigned. He is reportedly set to become part of NBC’s Football Night in America studio team next season.
“When you’ve done something for so long. I mean, he’s been here 19 years, but we’ve been married 30 and he’s been coaching for all that time,” Kiya said. “Coaches, really, they work 80-hour weeks. So we were really just like, ‘What a blessed run we’ve had, what an awesome opportunity we’ve had, the ups, the downs, the friends along the way.’ We just saw it as a blessing to be able to end it on our own terms.”
While Mike plots his next move, Kiya remains in contact with the Rooney family. She debuted her NFL collection at the 2026 NFL Draft, which is taking place in Pittsburgh. After that, it’s on to the annual Steelers Style Fashion Show in October.
“The possibility of me continuing to participate in that even though [Mike is] no longer [the] current head coach, we’re still very much a part of the organization,” she said.
For this collection specifically, Kiya drew on her own experience as someone who wanted to support her husband on gameday but didn’t want to wear the official team gear.
“The whole concept of the collection is about just elevated comfort,” she said. “It really stemmed from all the years that my husband has been in coaching, whether it was college coaching or professional coaching. I never wore the team apparel because I just wasn’t comfortable. Wasn’t me.”
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She continued, “I started to think that maybe there are other women out there like me that didn’t want to wear what was available, was looking for something different than what was available. So I designed a collection that was something that I would wear.”
Kiya soon found out she wasn’t alone.
“I was really surprised to see that those women that are football-first fans, they still want fashion as well,” she said. “They want something that’s neat and bold and new and fresh. So we kind of really run the spectrum of fan types.”
