Terrell Owens has spent nearly three decades watching dementia take pieces of his family, starting with the grandmother who raised him.
Story Snapshot
- Owens says his grandmother was diagnosed with dementia in 1996, the same year the San Francisco 49ers drafted him, and her condition later progressed into Alzheimer’s disease.
- He says she lived with the disease for 16 to 17 years and eventually needed a wheelchair and assisted living care.
- Owens revealed his father also had dementia and died at age 83 just weeks before a recent health discussion.
- The former NFL star testified before the U.S. Senate in 2004, naming his grandmother, Alice Black, in the official record.
A Family Story That Started The Same Year His Career Began
Owens has told the same core story for over 20 years. In 1996, right as he entered the National Football League, his grandmother received a dementia diagnosis. That condition later developed into Alzheimer’s disease, according to Owens’s own account shared across multiple interviews and public appearances.
He recently discussed her decline again during a health-focused conversation hosted by NYU Langone Health, describing symptoms that many families recognize. “She would tell me one thing and then five minutes later she’ll tell me the same thing,” Owens said, describing the repetition that marked her early cognitive decline.
That single symptom, repeating the same thought minutes apart, is one of the earliest warning signs doctors watch for in Alzheimer’s patients. Owens watched it happen to the woman who helped raise him, and he watched it stretch on for years, not weeks.
Sixteen Years, A Wheelchair, And A Second Loss
Owens says his grandmother’s disease did not move quickly. He has described her living with dementia and Alzheimer’s for roughly 16 to 17 years before her death, a stretch of time that eventually left her confined to a wheelchair in assisted living care. That is a long road for any family to walk alongside a loved one losing pieces of their memory.
Owens also shared a second, more recent loss. He said his father, who also had dementia, died at age 83 just weeks before the NYU Langone conversation took place. Two generations of his family, grandmother and father, both faced the same disease from different angles and different decades.
That kind of overlap is not rare. More than 12 million Americans currently live with Alzheimer’s or another dementia, and just over a quarter of U.S. households include someone facing the disease firsthand. Owens’s family simply put a familiar name and face on numbers most people never stop to read.
Advocacy That Started Long Before The Cameras Rolled
Owens did not wait until retirement to speak up. In 2004, while still an active NFL wide receiver, he appeared before the U.S. Senate and delivered a prepared statement naming his grandmother, Alice Black, and confirming she had Alzheimer’s disease. That testimony put his family’s story into the official congressional record two decades before his recent media interviews.
His official website states that his continued partnership with the Alzheimer’s Association remains “near and dear to his heart,” and traces his advocacy directly back to his grandmother’s 1996 diagnosis. Owens has stayed connected to the cause through awareness campaigns and fundraising events well beyond his playing career.
Terrell Owens Opens Up About How Dementia Has Impacted His Family https://t.co/P0goJtsaXN pic.twitter.com/Sq9sOSEtoS
— Healthy Hoss 🍎 (@HealthyHoss) September 24, 2026
Athletes who speak publicly about family caregiving carry real weight, since roughly half of unpaid caregivers nationwide are supporting someone with Alzheimer’s or another dementia. Owens’s willingness to keep repeating his grandmother’s story, year after year, gives that broad statistic a human face millions of readers can relate to directly.
Practical Advice Paired With A Personal Story
The NYU Langone discussion featuring Owens paired his family history with practical guidance from the accompanying physician, focused on aerobic exercise, quality sleep, and managing blood pressure as ways to support brain health over time. Those recommendations were not Owens’s own medical claims, but they framed his personal story inside a broader conversation about prevention.
Owens’s account has stayed consistent across ESPN, CNN, Essence, Sports Illustrated, and now Men’s Health, spanning nearly two decades of interviews. For a public figure who built his name on confidence and controversy on the football field, his steady willingness to revisit his family’s hardest chapter stands out as one of his most consistent public commitments.
Sources:
menshealth.com, theedenmagazine.com, edmylett.com, essence.com, espn.com, terrellowens.com
