CINCINNATI — Just inside Nancy and Mike Brown's modest house in Indian Hill is a plate of cookies.
"I didn't make them," Mrs. Brown says as she giggles and offers them to me and my photographer, Rob Pieper. She admits she doesn't really enjoy cooking, but she wants to make sure we have a snack.
Petite and vivacious, Nancy Brown welcomes us in and tells us the first of many secrets: That she hasn't told anyone in her family that she's agreed to do this interview. When I checked back with her weeks later and asked if she had confessed, she smiled and said, "No. But they probably know."
The Bengals owners have been married for 60 years. How has she managed it?
"You overlook a lot of stuff," she said through a smile.
If you conduct an online search for Nancy Brown, you will have difficulty finding a picture of her. She doesn't do interviews (except this one) and she can't be found in the owner's box for games. Where you will find her is at any number of tailgates around Paycor Stadium.
"I just love mingling with fans," Nancy said while navigating a recent tailgate we joined her at. "I've become friends with so many of them."
Nancy says she likes the food and the fanfare. She started going to tailgates 30 years ago, with no security detail and no entourage; just her friend, Sylvia, and anything orange and black on her body.
She walks fast looking for her friends the Bengal Twins, the End Zone Gang, and more. One group she met years ago when she was walking by their tailgate and heard them talking unkindly about her husband.
"I walk by and they were blasting Mike and not saying kind things about him," Nancy recalled. "So I walked over and I said 'that's my husband you're talking about' and tried to convince him that he's a nice guy."
In the process, she knocked their pot of chili over and said she felt horrible about it.
"I thought, well, that's not gonna help anything. The next week I went back and I brought them gift cards." They've been friends ever since.
Identical twins Steve and Jeff Nagel, known as the Bengal Twins, love that Nancy joins the fun.
"It's just amazing that she's just like a normal person out here just enjoying the other fans, which is fantastic," the Twins said.
Nancy says she doesn't think of herself as a team owner when she's at the tailgates.
"And I almost forget I am," she said with a smile.
For some away games, she doesn't take the team plane: She climbs aboard a bus and drives with her fellow tailgaters.
"One time, we went to Chicago. And we won the game, and after we won the game, they picked me up and passed me through the crowd. That's something I don't think anybody in my family knows!" Nancy said.
And she remembers a road trip to Charlotte in what she calls a complete downpour. "Our bus parked about two miles away, and we walked in the pouring down rain to get to the stadium and we were drenched and whn when I got up to the seats with this group," recalls Mrs. Brown. "I get a call from Katie (Brown Blackburn) and she said, 'Mom, would you want to come and sit in the suite with us?' And I said, 'Not unless you want a hundred and twenty-five other people that come with me!'. I can't leave these people to go sit in the suite." So Mrs. Brown sat in the pouring rain with her tailgate friends enjoying the game.
In fact, Nancy says she very rarely sits in the owner's box.
"I love being outside with the fans," she said. When I asked her why, she said "I don't want to be special."
At autograph events with the team, she gets in the back of the line to get her autographs. Even when offered to go to the front of the line, she refuses, saying she prefers to wait like everyone else.
She told me she gets very nervous watching the games and, when they are away, she'll turn off the television if they're losing. She said she's watched the AFC Championship game win that sent the Bengals to the Super Bowl 500 times.
"It was just, It's such a good feeling," Nancy said.
When players are nominated for awards fans get to vote on, Nancy Brown goes into overdrive.
"I probably shouldn't tell you this, but we get on the phone and we do our business and we vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote. I mean, all of us are voting to try to get them in. Actually, one time it was like 2:30 in the morning. I was voting, I don't know if it was Joe Burrow, it might have been, or one of our players that we were voting for. I'll call my Wisconsin people. I'll call my Arizona people. I'll call my Columbus people, and have them all voting to try to get our guy in. And we were really, we have a very good record." Nancy said.
What does her husband think about this?
"Well, he worries about me voting. He says you shouldn't be doing that. You're gonna get in trouble," Nancy said.
Nancy spends time each season learning all the players' names and numbers and has a special place in her heart for many, including former running back, Joe Mixon.
"Yeah, I used to have a cardboard cut out of him in the hallway there," Nancy said, pointing to the hall near her dining room. She says it was her granddaughters, Elizabeth and Caroline, who are now both working in the Bengals organization, who gave her the cutout for her 80th birthday.
She said she is very close to Elizabeth and Caroline.
"I was kind of like a third parent," she said.
Their mother, Katie Brown Blackburn, and father Troy Blackburn, were busy helping run the Bengals franchise, and she joked that, "the three of us put together two really great kids."
She is also close to her two grandchildren from her son Paul and his wife, Michael and Nancy.
"Our whole family is very loving," Nancy said. "I mean really and truly, we just have a loving family."
Being married to the owner of the Bengals means Nancy endures negativity about her husband. She would like to say it doesn't hurt, but she admits it does.
"I can think of certain players who did certain things. And you know, their wives would say, 'Oh don't take it personally'. I said, 'Well, I'm sorry I do take it personally and It hurts.'"
She said her husband wants nothing more than a Super Bowl for the city.
"What I most want in all of life: I want to win a Super Bowl for Mike. It would be nice for the whole city. It would be nice for so many people and we've lived through this once, this experience with the Super Bowl, and we know what it does to a city. It brings it alive and If we would win, I mean, this city would go berserk."
She says her husband is the most loyal person she knows.
"He is loyal to this town. He's loyal to me. He's loyal to his family... He's just a very loyal person. Sometimes this loyalty can hurt him." Nancy said. I asked her, "But you wouldn't change that?" Her response: "No, no, not at all."
The thing she wants Bengals fans and the people of Cincinnati to know most about her husband is that the Bengals franchise is in Cincinnati because of his work behind the scenes.
"Mike likes to protect his dad, and I would protect his dad, too, but I know who did the work. I was there. He wanted his dad back in football. And so he worked at (bringing the team to Cincinnati), and he's the one that did it. And that's why it's so hurtful when I hear people saying nasty things about him. And then you got the, 'oh, he's cheap.' Believe me, he is the least cheap person of anyone on the planet. He just does things anonymously. He doesn't tell people he doesn't want to look like the big deal. But you know, we live like that. He's not flashy." Nancy said.
