Beth Shuey spent twenty-two years as an NFL head coach’s wife and then went through the end of that marriage in public, during one of the most turbulent stretches of her husband’s career. What she did afterwards is the part worth reading about: she wrote a book about it, and went to work helping other people through the same thing.
Quick Bio / At a Glance
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Name | Beth Shuey, now Beth Shuey McGuire |
| Born | 1968, Morocco, Indiana, United States |
| Education | North Newton Junior-Senior High School; Indiana State University, marketing |
| Known For | Former wife of NFL head coach Sean Payton |
| Married Sean Payton | July 11, 1992 |
| Divorced | 2014, after 22 years |
| Children | Meghan, born 1997, and Connor, born 2000 |
| Book | Beautiful Ashes, co-written |
| Church Role | Divorce care leader and coach, Cross Timbers Church, Argyle, Texas |
| Remarried | Jamie McGuire, September 20, 2020 |
Indiana Beginnings
Beth Shuey was born in 1968 in Morocco, Indiana, a small town in the northwest of the state, to Thomas and Joyce Shuey. She grew up with a sister, attended North Newton Junior-Senior High School, and went on to Indiana State University, where she took a bachelor’s degree in marketing.
Indiana State is also where she met Sean Payton, then a quarterback. They married on July 11, 1992.
Twenty-Two Years in Coaching
The Moving Years
Payton’s early career followed the standard assistant-coach pattern: repeated moves, short contracts, and a family relocating each time. Shuey handled that stretch largely out of view, and the couple’s two children, Meghan and Connor, were born in 1997 and 2000.
New Orleans
Payton became head coach of the New Orleans Saints in 2006, the year the team returned to the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina. The role made him one of the most prominent public figures in the city, and the Saints won Super Bowl XLIV in February 2010.
That period also brought the bounty investigation and Payton’s suspension for the 2012 season — an unusually intense stretch of scrutiny for any coaching family.
The Divorce
The marriage ended in 2014. Because of Payton’s profile in New Orleans, the divorce was covered in detail by sports and local media, and Shuey has since described the experience of going through it publicly as the hardest part.
She has not used interviews to relitigate it. Her account is in the book.
Beautiful Ashes and the Work Since
Writing It Down
Shuey co-wrote Beautiful Ashes, a book drawn directly from the divorce and framed around recovery rather than blame. The title comes from the biblical image of beauty exchanged for ashes, and the intended reader is someone in the middle of the same thing.
Divorce Care
She went on to serve as a divorce care leader and coach at Cross Timbers Church in Argyle, Texas. It is unpaid-adjacent, unglamorous work with small groups of people, and it is the most consistent thing she has done since 2014.
That trajectory — from a very public ending to leading small-group recovery sessions — is the actual story here, and it is routinely skipped in favour of the divorce headline.
Life Now
Shuey married realtor Jamie McGuire on September 20, 2020, and uses the name Beth Shuey McGuire. She lives in Texas.
Sean Payton left the Saints after the 2021 season and became head coach of the Denver Broncos in 2023. He has also remarried.
A Note on Sources
Much of the biographical detail about Shuey — the birth year, the hometown, her parents’ names, her height — circulates through aggregator profiles rather than reporting, and net worth figures attached to her name are invented. The elements that hold up consistently are the marriage dates, the two children, the book, the church role and the 2020 remarriage.
More profiles of sports families: Melissa Ann Piavis and Ayahna Cornish-Lowry.
