If an NFL season and a Super Bowl can have an untold story, the tale of Galynn Brady’s journey to watch her son last February was one.

Tom Brady and her family kept it that way all through the season – through Deflategate, through the four-game suspension, through the conspicuous absence of Galynn and her husband at Patriots games.

Now, Galynn Brady is sharing the story of what was going on behind the scenes, the story that her son only hinted at. In an interview with the NFL Network’s Andrea Kremer, Galynn Brady tells of being diagnosed with breast cancer in the summer of 2016. It was a “fast-growing, aggressive” cancer. There were lumpectomies and then five months of chemotherapy.

“He wanted to know what was happening,” Brady Sr. says.

“He was in touch with us on an extraordinary regular basis. He knew our frustration of not being able to be back there with him and he said, ‘Oh, you’ll be ready for the Super Bowl.’ He told us that in the middle of the season. We did have it charted out that the end of her five months was going to be two weeks before the Super Bowl.”

Over the intervening five months, “we Face-Timed a lot” Galynn, who lives in the Bay Area, said of her son. “Losing my hair was hard for me. I’d have my bandanna on and he’d say, ‘Oh, Mom, you look beautiful, you look so beautiful.’”

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Bouts with pneumonia and shingles left her ability to travel to Houston for the Super Bowl in doubt until just the day before. And then, when the Patriots were in a 28-3 hole to the Atlanta Falcons, she was ready to leave.

“I said to Tom, ‘I just want to go home,’” Galynn said with a laugh. “She probably said it 60 times,” her husband admitted. “I was,” she added, “just heartbroken for Tommy.”

For “Tommy” and the Patriots, though, the mantra all season and on the sideline was to win for Brady’s mom and that’s just how it worked out. “It was great,” Brady, the game’s MVP, said emotionally the day after the game. “She’s been through a lot. Way harder than what I went through last night, way harder than what our team went through last night.”

Galyn called the feeling “euphoric” and even got a Super Bowl ring of her own, which seems pretty fitting. “I’m so glad that I decided I would go and just put cancer aside for that weekend.”


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