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Key Points Mel Owens attributes his personality to both athletic father and energetic, spunky mother. Owens played pro football before becoming a sports attorney and "Golden Bachelor" contestant. He says, “At the end, you have to make difficult decisions. You just have to trust your gut.” As The Golden Bachelor Season 2 nears its finale, fans still feel they don’t know that much about seemingly strong and silent star Mel Owens. But the former football player recently revealed to Parade that his parents divorced when he was young — and that he actually takes after his late mother. On the Oct. 22 hometowns episode, Owens chose Peg Munson, 62, and Cindy Cullers, 60, as his final two ladies. But as Owens met his contestants’ families, he didn’t disclose any new information about his own past. It is already known that Owens followed his father into a successful sports career. As Parade previously reported, his father, Walter Owens, was a pitcher and outfielder in Negro league baseball from 1953 to 1955. During that time, he also competed in basketball and track. Walter later went on to an academic career, spending nearly two decades in the Detroit Public Schools system, where he coached basketball, baseball, cross country, and track. He later joined the faculty/staff at NIU in 1973, serving as both a professor and coach. Mel grieved his dad’s death on September 20, 2020, at the age of 87. 🎬 SIGN UP for Parade’s Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox 🎬 In an interview, Owens told Parade, “He was my mentor. He was a great dad and great mentor to me, educator, loving. [His history] was pretty unique. He was a coach and teacher and he taught in the public school system for 20, 30 years and [then] was a professor and coach in college. So just that alone, there was a lot of energy and wisdom there.” When asked if his mother was still alive, Owens said, “No, she’s not. She passed, too.” He noted, “My mom was great, a lot of energy, a lot of spunk and feisty. That’s where I get that from.” Owens recalled his folks’ marriage, “They were divorced when I was like 10, 11, or 12, something like that.” Related: ‘Golden Bachelor’s’ Father Was a Negro Leagues Hall of His parents both contributed to his success, and Owens followed in his dad’s athletic footsteps. Mel played basketball, baseball, and football in high school. At the University of Michigan, he played college football from 1976 to 1980. Then Owens went pro, playing linebacker for nine seasons with the Los Angeles Rams. Now a sports attorney in Laguna Hills, California, Owens told Parade of his athletic career and how it’s affected his time on The Golden Bachelor, “It’s something I’ve done all my life. I played football for 26 straight years, so you can never really shake it. Sports have shaped my thinking but also, everything I’ve done. In football, you have to be responsible, tenacious, nimble. You gotta be a great teammate. You gotta have responsibilities. You gotta play by the rules. So all these things come into my personality so of course it carries over into a show like this.” Although it’s been reported that Owens’ football career ended because of a herniated disk in his back, he shrugged, “You leave football because you get too old to play. There’s not one thing that made me leave the game other than it was time for me to leave. You can’t play forever…at some point you gotta leave the game.” Now, he’s found a new fame game as ABC’s second Golden Bachelor and said of viewers looking forward to the finale, “I think they’re going to love it. It’s unique, and there are some twists and turns in it.” Although Owens faced an ageism controversy in the beginning, he said of his season, “There was no struggle. I had fun.” Related: ‘Golden Bachelor’ Contestants Slam Mel Owens Over Age Comments (Exclusive) However, he added, “At the end, you have to make difficult decisions. You just have to trust your gut and your instinct. There’s just maybe a little deeper connection with one [contestant] over the other and you just hope you make the correct decision. It’s collective. Every experience you have with them matters and it goes into that end result but there wasn’t one thing that hometown or a trip to another place that led to [my] decision overall.” Not giving anything away, Owens told Parade about his final two of Cindy, a retired biomedical engineer and Peg, a former firefighter, “They’re great. They’re energetic, sophisticated, funny. That’s why we’re together.” But soon, fans will see him say goodbye to one of them. The Golden Bachelor airs Wednesday nights on ABC.
