"Offered to give up my career to save my marriage": Kim Mulkey once unveiled the key lessons from divorce and "regrets" of its impact on her family

LSU coach Kim Mulkey has a storied coaching career, but when her marriage ended in 2006, she was confronted with an unexpected and difficult challenge. She won her first NCAA championship with Baylor in 2005, but behind that success, Mulkey's personal life was in turmoil.

Mulkey and her ex-husband Randy Robertson had been married since 1987. They have two children together, Kramer and Makenzie. Everything seemed to be going well — at least on the surface — until, a year after winning the national title, Robertson informed Mulkey that he wanted a divorce.

The Hall of Fame coach sat down for an interview with Sports 2's Michael Cauble in May last year. Cauble asked Mulkey about the message she delivered during a rotary club speech regarding the impact of divorce on the family.

"I feel like if things happen to us as public figures and we don't share things, we're not helping people. I have never shied away from talking about how hurtful the divorce was. I even offered to give up my career to save my marriage," Mulkey said (21:46).

"It does affect children — I don't care if your children are older or younger ... Divorce is too easy. You need to really do some soul-searching as a human about the selfishness of a divorce and how it affects other people, not just yourself."

"I won't ever get over it. Deep down, internally, I feel like a failure that I couldn't make my marriage work," she continued. "It's something that I just want people who are struggling to fight through if you can. I think people give up too soon."

Kim Mulkey's love life and relationship with Randy Robertson

Kim Mulkey met her future husband, Randy Robertson, when she was a star player for the Louisiana Tech University basketball team in the early 1980s. Robertson was a quarterback for the Bulldogs football team and was working at the school when he and Kim began dating.

After nearly seven years of dating, the pair tied the knot on July 17, 1987. However, another family drama preceded the nuptials. Kim Mulkey's father, who had divorced her mother years earlier, was invited to the wedding but didn't attend. As a result, she had to walk down the aisle alone.

During their 19-year marriage, Mulkey and Robertson had two children — daughter Makenzie in 1991 and son Kramer in 1994. However, she revealed that she never planned on being a mother and was depressed when she got pregnant.