Baker Mayfield shares how wife Emily first rejected him

Baker Mayfield and his wife Emily (formerly Emily Wilkinson) have been together since college at Oklahoma and now share a daughter together, but the beginning of their relationship did not go as smoothly as Baker would have liked.

The Mayfields sat down with ESPN reporter Michelle Beisner-Buck for an interview ahead of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ Week 7 “Monday Night Football” game against the Detroit Lions. During the interview, Beisner-Buck asked to hear the story of how the Mayfields got together. Baker shared the details of the rocky journey.

Baker apparently asked a mutual friend for Emily’s phone number, and she declined.

“So, I went to Instagram, hit the follow button. No follow back. Hit the unfollow button, hit the follow again, no follow back. Tried to slide into the DMs, no response. At this point, I’m feeling pretty rejected. Finally you gave [our friend] the OK, I could get your number,” Mayfield recalled.

The two then went out for lunch and hit it off. Emily liked that Baker spent the entire time asking about her.

“The entire time he was asking questions about me, about my family. It was not the Baker show,” Emily recalled.

Both parties went home telling their friends/family that they were going to end up marrying each other. They ended up engaged six months later, and they were married in July 2019.

Baker now credits Emily for being by his side and helping him navigate the low points of his career. He has worked his way back from being let go by the Cleveland Browns and Carolina Panthers, to finding a new home with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, with whom he’s enjoyed success.