Isabelle Sewell Talks About Balancing Life as Detroit Lions WAG (Exclusive)

Football fans know Penei Sewell as the Detroit Lions’ star offensive tackle since he joined the NFL as a first-round draft pick in 2021. With staggering gameplay statistics, the 24-year-old has established himself as one of the team’s most key players.

In 2024, NFL.com reported that Penei signed a four-year, $112 million extension contract with the Lions. With an average annual salary of $28 million per season, Yahoo Sports named him the second-highest-paid offensive lineman as of early 2025.

Whenever he’s on the field, Penei’s performance impresses millions of NFL viewers across the country, but his four biggest fans keep cheering even after the stadium empties. The All-Pro athlete and his wife, Isabelle Sewell, share three kids: son Malakai, 2, and daughters Mila, 17 months, and Marley, who was born this past April.

Isabelle, 25, was a cheerleader at the University of Oregon when she first met Penei, who started on the school’s football team from his freshman year in 2018 until the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, he decided to opt out of a final season at the collegiate level in favor of entering the NFL.

His transition to professional sports wasn’t the only big change that happened in Penei’s life that year. 2020 was also the year that his and Isabelle’s friendly, cheerleader-footballer relationship blossomed into something more.

“Right before COVID was when him and I actually started our relationship together,” she tells PEOPLE exclusively. “At the time, we didn’t know if football was going to continue, or even what the state of the world was going to look like. So he decided to basically move in with me and my family.”

Isabelle adds, “We really jumped in headfirst just because of everything that was happening in the world, and we’ve pretty much been inseparable ever since.”

A little over four years and one baby later, the couple tied the knot with a summer wedding ceremony in Malibu, Calif. Now they’re parents to three kids under the age of three; Isabelle works as a stay-at-home-mom, and Penei’s career supports the family financially.

As grateful as she feels, Isabelle admits that their dynamic isn’t without challenges. Penei isn’t at home much, given his demanding NFL schedule, and his wife recognizes that he has to miss out on some more typical parenting experiences.

“He basically leaves before the kids wake up in the morning and gets home just in time for bath time and bedtime,” she shares. “That’s the biggest sacrifice he makes for our family. We obviously appreciate what he does so much, but it still sucks that he’s missing valuable time with the kids.

“I think that’s definitely gotten harder for him over the years, and he’s feeling that more because you don’t get this time back, unfortunately,” says Isabelle.

Life spent on the sidelines of the NFL can be quite unpredictable. Like with many professional sports, players could get traded to new teams, meaning they’d have to relocate themselves and their families to another city or state entirely.

For the Sewells, however, there’s far more stability in their home. Penei’s dedication to the sport may limit his quality time at home, but the payoff for his efforts manifests in his extended contract in Detroit. That is to say, Isabelle doesn’t have to worry too much about moving her kids around the country.

“We’re really in a lucky situation where he is one of the top people of his position, if not the top person in his position. So the likelihood of him going to a different team while he’s in the prime of his career is really, really low, versus other people who are really fighting for a roster spot,” she explains.

Isabelle doesn’t have family in Detroit, but she’s still been able to put down roots. “We’ve had to kind of build our own village out here,” she says, and the pro football community makes up a large part of their network of loved ones.

“I feel so lucky,” she tells PEOPLE. “I’ve made some of my best friends — not just in the NFL, but in life — through the NFL here in Michigan, through the Lions,”

When Penei joined the team in 2021, Isabelle says there were a few other partners of players who had kids themselves. But in the past few years, she noticed that many of the women, herself included, started to become moms around the same time.

As a result, they get to raise kids who are “super close in age” and navigate motherhood together, says Isabelle. It’s a bonding experience that she was extremely heartened to have.

“It’s hard when you’re going through something and nobody else really understands … having to navigate motherhood and parenthood alone during the season,” Isabelle shares. “So to have your core group of girlfriends also going through all the same things at the same time and being a part of the NFL, understanding those struggles on top of it, it’s just been the best support system ever.”