He works out of his house most days but makes frequent day trips to cities in the West, often to Salt Lake. "That was the deal — I'd be home at night," he says. He changes diapers, feeds the kids, walks the floor with them late at night and dashes to the store on errands, although there is often a nanny around to help.

"He's a family guy with an earpiece in one ear and a BlackBerry in his pocket," says Sherry. "He's on the phone a lot. You'll be talking to him, and all of a sudden he's talking and making no sense, and you realize he's talking to someone else. He's multitasking. He can do 10 things at once."

For the record, Young appears to be as fit as he was during his playing days, which ended in 1999, the result of jogging and swimming laps. Early on in his marriage, he was nonplussed one day when Barb told him, "You're fat."

"Fat!? Whaddya mean?"

"You're fat," she repeated.

"I won two MVPs at this weight!"

Says Young, "I lost 15 pounds and called it a day."

Young says he is happy to let Barb lead the team — "Barb, she's the quarterback now. I enjoy that" — although he might balk on one point.

"I'm going to be 62 for (Summer Ann's) graduation," he was telling a foursome as they waited to tee off. "Now (Barb) says (Summer Ann) needs a sister. That's great, but now I'm going to be, what, 65!"

Barb is a strong personality and, according to Sherry, "She's a very organized person. She's been a tremendous asset to Steve, advising him. She has a background in marketing. I'll ask Steve something on the phone, and he'll say, 'Um, let me run it by Barb.' They work together."

Among other things, she has introduced a reading program into the marriage. They buy two copies of the same book and read them simultaneously, rotating genres each time — religion, classics, history, novels.

Barb saw her husband play in only a handful of football games and wishes now that he had played a little longer so she could watch. He reminds her that she might have seen more of his playing days if she had not rejected several attempts by friends to set them up years earlier (she wanted nothing to do with famous athletes).

"Obviously, I wish I had met her 10 years before," Young says. "She says, 'We could have four more kids.' Exactly."

Those close to Young say this is the happiest, most relaxed they have ever seen him.

"He is in the sweet spot of his life now," says Jim Herrmann, one of Young's closest friends for 25 years. "He's beyond happy."

But to really understand and appreciate this happy state, you have to go back. The years in which Young was in the national spotlight were the most tumultuous of his life, with the self-imposed pressures of football, his bouts with anxiety and his long, public search for a wife.