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With a seafoam blue one-piece hugging her taut, petite body, Micki Ryan reached her arms around her shirtless 6-foot-4 husband, Rex, while the two shared a passionate kiss that seemed more akin to teenage lovers than a couple married for a quarter of a century.
The pair were frolicking in the Caribbean last week when Ryan was spied sporting a risqué tattoo of his wife in a Mark Sanchez jersey — and nothing else.
“I’ve been married 25 years,” the Jets coach told reporters on Tuesday, regarding the 3-year-old tattoo. “And through my eyes, my wife’s the most beautiful woman in the world. So that’s what it is.”
The beleaguered football coach is still very much infatuated with his wife, who, at 49, has maintained an enviable figure — flat tummy, muscular arms and legs, as well as a beachy blond bob. Ryan has even proudly compared his wife — who made headlines in 2010 by allegedly shooting a sexy video of her feet that was posted on a swingers’ Web site — to Gisele Bundchen. (Micki declined to be interviewed for this article.)
So who is this woman behind one of the most colorful characters in the NFL? And how has this couple, in a world where adultery is as common as carpooling, kept their marriage going so strong for so long?
Born Michelle Goeringer (but nicknamed Micki) and brought up in Clinton, Okla., friends say Mrs. Ryan is a traditional, stay-at-home mother who still expects to be on an equal footing with her husband.
“She has such positive energy,” says Suzanne Johnson, wife of Jets owner Woody Johnson, who bonded with Micki when the Jets hired her husband as head coach, in 2009.
“She puts her family first. She’s not running around having lunch all day. She’s a very traditional wife.”
While the limelight-loving coach has always courted the media, his better half is happy to blend into the background with one seasoned NFL reporter noting, “I wouldn’t know her if she was standing in front of me.”
The couple first met while attending Southwestern Oklahoma State University, where Micki was an aspiring teacher, avid reader of Tolstoy and daughter of a highway patrolman.
“I don’t know why, but for the first time in my life I thought, I just want to be with this girl,” Rex once told the New York Times.
While the petite blonde was a grounded literature lover blissfully unaware of pigskin rules, her future husband was a mischievous lineman on the school’s football team. After graduation, the aspiring NFL coach landed a position as a graduate assistant coach at Eastern Kentucky University. When he called to tell Micki about the job, she cried and said, “What about us?” He proposed marriage over the phone and Micki, as besotted with him as he was with her, happily accepted.
Micki pursued a master’s degree in English at Morehead State University in Kentucky, and the couple tied the knot in 1987 at a ceremony in Bessie, Okla. They would go on to have two sons: Payton, 20, who now attends college in the South, and Seth, 18, a senior and standout football player at Summit HS, who wants to become a coach like his father.
The family followed Rex across the country as he climbed the college coaching ranks before finally settling in Baltimore as the Ravens’ defensive coordinator, in 1999.
Ten years later, Rex got his big break as he accepted the head coaching job of the New York Jets. Minutes into his first press conference, the new Gang Green leader was crowing about his supportive wife.
“My wife of 22 years is right there. There’s only two kinds of coaches’ wives in the NFL — that’s the ex-ones and the great ones. I know what you’re thinking: ‘Man, did you outkick your coverage.’ You’re right. Great recruiter, I guess.”
Despite Rex’s meteoric rise in position and salary, Micki has not succumbed to the temptations of other “Real Athletes’ Housewives,” sticking to a subdued style of no-fuss jeans and comfortable tops, as well as her trademark squared-off glasses. She lives with her husband and younger son in a large but traditional home with a whitewashed front porch in Summit, an upscale New Jersey suburb. Rather than relying on trendy celebrity workouts like Zumba or SoulCycle, Micki keeps her body svelte by walking two miles a day on the treadmill.
Rex and Micki keep their love alive with frequent date nights at pricey steakhouse Roots in Summit and the Red Cadillac in Union, NJ, a Mexican restaurant where they share guacamole and beef tacos.
“They definitely eat,” says the Red Cadillac owner Joe Montes, calling his weekly clients “a cool couple.”
“They’re very down-to-earth. [Rex] isn’t full of himself. I try to keep people at bay while he’s having dinner, but he’s very accessible to the public,” says Montes, adding that Micki is always helping out with charities.
“We did a few things for Sandy relief, and they donated. During the holidays, they dropped off tons of presents for kids living in a shelter. She’s always looking to do something nice,” says Montes.
That sentiment extends to gifts for her husband, who turned 50 on Dec. 13.
“She gave him a Maserati for his birthday,” Montes adds.
Micki dutifully attends every Jets home game at MetLife Stadium, usually ensconced in a suite with the general manager’s family, and told The Post, in 2010, that she’s extremely superstitious, always wearing a retro Jets jersey on game day.
But football isn’t the couple’s only shared pastime — they’ve sat courtside to watch both the Knicks and Nets, and were fixtures during last year’s Stanley Cup Finals, where they wore matching Devils jerseys.
A year after arriving in the Big Apple, she modeled Jets gear in the NFL’s popular women’s apparel campaign, which prompted her proud hubby to boast that just like New England Patriots quarterbackTom Brady, “I’m also married to a supermodel.”
But Micki’s good-girl image got a saucy spin in December 2010, when a set of tawdry videos surfaced on the Internet showing a kinkier side of the lovey-dovey couple.
Under the username “IHavePrettyFeet,” the videos showed a woman who looked like Micki modeling her tootsies to a man who sounded a lot like Gang Green’s fearless leader, saying: “You have really beautiful feet. They are really soft.”
Originally posted on a swingers Web site and the raunchy portal alt.com, the spot went viral as the couple hid from the media tornado.
While he never copped to the dirty deed, Ryan said he was embarrassed and the Jets called it a “personal matter.”
Two years later, the incident hasn’t put a damper on their storybook romance. Suzanne Johnson credits the couple’s strength and long history for helping them survive the ups and downs of the NFL — and life in general.
“Football is a hard sport,” Johnson says. “If you don’t love the guy, it’s going to be hard to be there and take the long hours and stress. They came up together, and that’s why it’s a strong bond.”