Behind every good man: The other half of Mizzou's coaching duo

Tia Odom strides into B&B Bagel Company and heads to the counter to order her go-to: a veggie melt bagel and a coffee.

She walks over to a table in the back corner of the restaurant and sits on the padded bench. Her bagel livens up the brown table top, an explosion of color with melted cheese covering diced red and green peppers.

However, in the hour she sits there, the bagel hardly gets touched. She constantly sees friends and acquaintances, waving them over and enquiring about how they are doing — whether that’s how school is going to how the person’s children are doing in school. It continues even as she gets ready to leave, standing up with the uneaten veggie melt still in hand.

This is standard protocol for Tia Odom. Always offer a hello, ask how the family is doing and rarely break eye contact when speaking. She knows everyone’s name, and everyone seems to know hers.

“I try to see a lot of different sides of stories of people’s points of view,” Tia said. “Like even if I think one way, I’ll listen and I’m always thinking of different ways to look at something.”

Yes, she is a coach’s wife, and has assumed that mantle for almost half of her life. And while she admits much of her life revolves around the different seasons of football, from spring practice to fall Saturdays, the challenges she has faced throughout her life have flown under the radar.

Much of what Tia does goes unseen, a somewhat remarkable feat considering her family is one of the most recognizable in Columbia. Yet, for a woman who comes from the small town of Kahoka, Missouri, the impact she has had on the communities she has lived in has been larger than most realize.

Tia Trump grew up as the youngest of four children involved in almost every activity available in Kahoka.

Her brother, who was the oldest of the four, played football at Clark County High School and then at Western Illinois University. Both older sisters played basketball in high school as well.

But rather than complain about having to attend all of her older siblings’ games, Tia came to realize that she enjoyed the go-go mentality of her schedule. By the time she was in high school, she had already set a precedent that she continues to follow today.

Even then, her day-to-day activities were almost non-stop. She was a cheerleader for the football team in the fall, starred on a basketball team that would reach the state Final Four her senior year, ran track in springs and danced throughout it all. Mixed in were National Honor Society and church youth group activities.

It all amounted to an impressive high school resume by the time she was looking for a college to attend. However, there was only one option in her mind.

Both of her sisters were already studying at Missouri. Tia’s drill team coach, Nancy Huffman, would regale stories of Missouri football. The choice was simple: Tia would be a Missouri Tiger.

Tia remained committed to fitting as much as possible into her schedule once in college. Her original major, dietetics, lasted for about a year before she transitioned into the College of Human Environmental Sciences to major in family consumer sciences education, while dabbling in textile apparel management and interior design.

“My thought was I would have teacher certification and through that you get early childhood certification and high school to teach those classes, but also I would have a food science background and architectural studies and textile apparel management and consumer economics,” Tia said.

Keeping in character, she also worked in Missouri’s Tiger Hostess’ program and was eventually president of her sorority, Tri Delta. Yet, despite the constant commitments, she was still able to make her way to Stankowski Field one Thursday night in the fall of 1996.

Tia was there for a pep rally for that year’s Homecoming game when she spotted Jeff Marriott, a classmate who also happened to be a defensive lineman for the Tigers and Barry Odom’s roommate.

Marriot and Tia stopped to talk, with Barry waiting on an introduction to the side. Finally, Barry was able to garner the introduction he awaited. The two established a connection that would later lead to many Thursday evening’s spent eating Bambino’s sun-dried tomato pesto mixed with creamy sauce and breakfasts eying the menu at Ernie’s.

By 1999, Tia was engaged to Barry. But instead of looking for a first apartment to follow college life, she was facing the possibility of returning to life in a dorm.

From the beginning, the Odoms believed coaching would give them a stable lifestyle. Barry could coach football, while Tia could use her degree to teach in the school district where they lived.

But the coaching jobs both desired for Barry were not as easy to come by as they had hoped.

At the time, major college programs only had around three graduate assistant positions available per team. Up through their marriage, Barry’s options consisted of positions at schools like Kilgore College in Kilgore, Texas, where he would be able to coach, but receive few benefits and be taking his new wife to live in a dorm.

Tia remained positive throughout the process. After all, Kilgore was home to the Kilgore Rangerettes, a nationally renowned drill team she grew up idolizing.

Then, a month after their wedding, the pair got a call they had been waiting for. A position had opened up with Barry’s high school program in Ada, Oklahoma.

The move seemed almost more than they could have asked for. Tia found a spot teaching at the junior high in town, where she helped in a computer lab. Barry was on the coaching staff of one of the state’s top football programs. Life was good. The Odoms bought a house.

The were putting that house on the market within a year.

The next destination was a familiar one, as Rock Bridge High School’s head coaching position opened. At 24 years old, Barry accepted the job and returned to Columbia immediately. Tia, then 23, still had to finish teaching and had to move in with her new in-laws for the remainder of the school year before she could reunite with her husband and their old stomping grounds.

Still, the original plan remained intact. Tia found a job teaching Creative Cuisine, at the time one of the most popular courses at Rock Bridge, along with a course dealing with interior design.

However, the initial plan would run its course after a few years. First, Barry would earn the graduate assistant position he’d always wanted. Then, Tia would become pregnant with their first son, J.T.

With Barry’s schedule calling for long hours, it was Tia who stepped away from teaching to allow for the chance to become a college coaching family, something the pair had always desired as an end goal.

“You kind of know in college coaching, it’s not going to be easy for a wife of a college coach to start a position with a company and climb in that company because you have to be ready to pick it up and move at any time,” Tia said. “Especially at that beginning stage and you’re just waiting for that next opportunity.”

Yet, each opportunity kept coming in the same place. In a situation highly unusual in college football, Barry kept ascending positions, but all within the Missouri program. Instead of moving around to a new college town every few years, Tia was in the only college town she had ever known.

With teaching in the rearview mirror, Tia was itching for ways to stay involved and active.

While in college, she had volunteered for the “Wine & Art Auction,” which was hosted by former Missouri coach Larry Smith’s wife, Cheryl. The auction benefited RAINN, a charity devoted to preventing sexual violence.

Now, the auction needed a planner. Tia jumped on the opportunity, and in no time had organized the entire event.

Tia continued to become more involved around Columbia as she and Barry waited to see if his next break would come in or out of Columbia. She added wedding planning to her itinerary then did freelance interior design work and eventually joined the Assistance League, a group that helps provide for children’s needs.

But with two sons and a routine that had been established over the decade since she had moved back to Columbia, a new opportunity arose. This time, Barry would be leaving immediately to become Memphis’ defensive coordinator.

For the first time in her life, Tia would experience something that is a norm for many college coaches’ wives: moving an entire family on her own.

“We didn’t think we’d ever come back,” Tia said. “We always knew that we loved Mizzou, so I kept some of our Mizzou things, but honestly it was like, ‘Here we go, where are we going to be?’”

The move to Memphis would bring a new challenge to Tia and her family. Along with being in a new city with new faces, they were now more recognizable than they had ever been.

The Odom boys went to Presbyterian Day School, where Tia remembers seeing cars decorated with stickers for Alabama, Ole Miss, Tennessee and almost every other SEC school. At the time, Memphis was not on the level of those schools or even close to it.

The Tigers were in rebuild mode, and the Odom kids heard about it from their classmates. Tia would listen to stories about how her sons were subjected to shouts of “You guys are horrible. Memphis won three games this year.”

It was then Tia recognized the situation she and her family would be in for as long as Barry remained in a highly public position. To solve the bullying, she developed a phrase that would work for her children, as well as herself, to put an end to the heckling.

“We just always armed them with ‘Wait and see. You wait and see,’” Tia said. “And the other thing is those kids that are saying that stuff, if they knew what you knew, and they knew what was being done … it’s the same with adults too.”

The increased possibility of hostility wasn’t the only difference Tia found in Memphis. For the first time in her life, she was living in an area she was completely unfamiliar with. She found herself at a crossroads with how to ensure her schedule remained at the pace she enjoyed.

She considered participating in her sorority’s local alumni chapter and helped in her boys’ school. She had friends who did charity work for the local children’s’ hospital and joined them when possible, as well as oversaw the remodeling of the kitchen in their newly bought home.

Still, she worried about getting too comfortable. Two years after they had arrived, her husband’s phone was ringing again, this time from the likes of Washington State and North Carolina to come coach defense.

But Barry wanted to coach in the Southeastern Conference, and he kept waiting. Tia, who was pregnant with their third child at the time, was unsure which town her daughter would be born in.

The definitive decision came while Barry was recruiting in a place he knew well. While in Columbia, Barry met with Gary Pinkel, who was looking to find Dave Steckel’s replacement as Mizzou's defensive coordinator.

Suddenly, Tia was moving her family again, this time back to a place she knew well.

Her first year in Columbia didn’t allow for Tia to settle back into the rhythm she had put on pause while in Memphis.

First came the birth of her daughter, Anna, followed by the unrest on Missouri’s campus resulting in the football team planning to boycott its game against Brigham Young University in support of Jonathan Butler.

Then came the news she had never expected to hear.

It was a Friday morning and Tia was driving back home after taking her kids to breakfast at Ernie’s when she received a text from her husband saying, “I don’t know what’s going on but there’s a press conference.”

Tia flipped to KFRU 1400 to see if she could learn more about what was happening. She turned it on just in time to hear the announcement that Pinkel was retiring.

Immediately, both of her sons began to cry as Tia tried to digest the information. If Pinkel was gone, that meant his staff would be gone by the end of the year. But they had just moved here, just had their baby girl. Where would she go?

The constant movement she had long been expecting seemed to have come at the wrong time.

In the following weeks, Tia and Barry tried to plan their next move. It was possible that Justin Fuente would move on from Memphis, so there was a chance to move back and for Barry to assume a head coaching duties there. Or, he could wait and see if other defensive coordinator positions opened up at other SEC schools.

Then, Missouri appeared to be leaning toward hiring Barry as its next head coach. The instability of their position started to weigh on Tia.

“The only time I’ve seen (Tia’s) nerves is when she just had the baby and Pinkel resigned and they’d just moved here,” said Lindsey Rowe, a close friend of Tia’s. “For a week, it was a complete unknown whether they were going to stay or were going to go.”

Following what Tia calls a “brutal” interview process when rumors swirled around her family and whether she would stay or go, good news finally emerged.

Barry would be the head coach. This time, instead of moving out, Tia helped other families move in.

Overnight, the Odoms’ lives changed drastically. Whereas Barry had been busy before with coaching duties, his schedule was now almost completely made of public appearances and functions alongside managing a football team. It became Tia’s job to ensure he remained connected to her and her family while also keeping up with his duties as the face of Missouri football. Planning her husband’s schedule began to replace event planning.

The publicity of her family was only augmented by her husbands’ position. Now, the Odoms couldn’t visit the restaurants they had frequented without feeling as though everyone inside was watching them.

A boy would wait on the hill at Memorial Stadium for J.T. to arrive during games, only to tell him how bad his father was at coaching football.

But Tia, whether she knew it or not at the time, was already prepared for the scrutiny she would soon fall under.

Her day-to-day life had already been busy up to that point; a slight increase in workload wouldn’t have thrown it off. Now, her life mostly revolves around her kids’ schedules and making sure they arrive in time for practices, school and any other activities they may have, as well as making sure her husband knows so he can leave work in time to see them.

“There’s been days during the spring or the summer where one son is playing baseball or basketball in St. Louis and the other in Kansas City, and she’ll send me a picture of each, as she’s been to St. Louis to watch one and then gets to Kansas City at night for the other,” Barry said. “She just goes and manages and runs the family.”

However, despite the demands on her schedule, Tia has still found time to contribute to causes she considers meaningful. And although it would be easy for her to publicly promote everything she does, publicity is not her style. She does not run any major social media pages and typically avoids advertising any of her work through Missouri’s communications department.

Yet, her efforts have still become visible. She became a key contributor in “Giving Beyond The Game,” which helped victims of Hurricane Harvey and worked with the “Go Red For Women” campaign for the American Heart Association. She was one of the strongest voices in the re-establishment of mums as a Missouri staple for Homecoming.

Contributing to charities is not uncommon for coaches’ wives, but the circumstances in which Tia’s contributions evolved are a rarity in the cutthroat world of big-time college sports, where public visibility can lead to problems when results on the field overshadow everything else.

Nearly all of Tia’s initiatives came while Barry and Missouri’s football program were struggling to string together wins. While it would have been easy for Tia to close herself off from outside interests, she remained involved in the community she had grown to call home.

“It never occurred to me not to because with the same knowledge we’ve equipped our sons with,” Tia said. “I know what they’re doing and it’s all good and it’s right, so I have no hesitation.”

Now, with three years to adjust to her new lifestyle, Tia is settling in. Last week, the University’s Board of Curators extended Barry’s contract, locking him up through the 2024 season. Tia and her husband have spent more than half their lives in Columbia. But for perhaps the first time, they have the security of knowing they'll stay for a while.