Who Is Larry Csonka Married To

Dr. Lawrence M. Saltis knew Larry Csonka’s escapades were on a collision course with readers, but he didn’t realize an advance copy of “Head On” would arrive at his house a few weeks ago.

Pranks, parties, power running and the perfect season. The memories came flooding back to Saltis while others were created by the book.

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“It was a really pleasant surprise,” Saltis, a neurologist whose office is on the west side of Akron, said Tuesday by phone. “I think I got it on a Thursday and read it by Sunday afternoon.”

The aftertaste has a distinct Northeast Ohio flavor.

“There’s a lot,” Saltis said, “and everything I can see is absolutely true.”

More than four decades after Csonka retired from the NFL, the Stow native remains a household name among football fans because of his legacy on the gridiron and larger-than-life persona.

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‘I am very glad that I was born and brought up where I was born and brought up’

Csonka’s memoir, which will be released Oct. 4, chronicles his Super Bowl glory days with the Miami Dolphins and iconic path to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but it also outlines a fascinating life filled with humorous tales and reads like an old-school tough guy’s love letter to the Akron area and the people who helped shape him.

“As far as I’m concerned, I couldn’t have picked a better spot if I had the whole Earth to choose from to be born and brought up,” Csonka, 75, told the Beacon Journal on Tuesday during a phone interview. “Don’t get me wrong. When I was in junior high, when I was in high school, I couldn’t wait to get out and see New York City and go to San Francisco and all that. I did, I did and I did. And you know what? I am very glad that I was born and brought up where I was born and brought up. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

The influence Dr. Saltis’ late father, Lawrence R. Saltis, had on Csonka proved to be at least as valuable as the lessons he learned growing up on an 18-acre dirt farm in Stow.

Csonka was no stranger to trouble. In the spring of his seventh-grade year, he and some friends took bicycles off a sidewalk in downtown Akron and rode them back to Stow instead of walking or hitchhiking. The decision led Csonka to juvenile court. The judge knew Saltis, a science teacher and coach at Stow’s junior high who became a principal. Saltis received a call from the judge and arranged for Csonka to report to his office at school the next day rather than juvenile hall.

“[Saltis] sat me down and said, ‘OK, here’s your prison sentence. You’re going to have to report to my office every day at eighth period. You’re going to read a book about football, and then you’re going to write a report about it, and I’m going to quiz you on the finer aspects of it. And until you get those correct, and you score in the high 90s or 100% on each of those two series of tests, you’re going to be in my care for the rest of the year,’” Csonka said. “So that’s the way that went. Well, understanding football and knowing what’s going on on a football field is the first step to liking to play football. I discovered that because of him. I would not have discovered that on my own.”

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Larry Csonka gives football another shot

Csonka had attempted to play football before Saltis’ crash course, but he quit because he had no clue how to approach the sport and found himself relegated to blocking-dummy duty. Once Saltis had armed Csonka with knowledge, everything changed. In eighth grade, he gave football another shot, playing with high school freshmen because there wasn’t a junior high team at the time.

“I was a big, farm kid, and I knew what I was doing,” Csonka said. “When you know what you’re doing on a football field, particularly in junior high, when you know where to line up and what to expect, let me tell you, it’s a whole other game.”

Larry Csonka credits Stow teacher for turning his life around

Dr. Saltis was a classmate and teammate of Csonka who stopped playing football as a junior to focus on golf. He’s still in awe of Csonka’s journey toward becoming a five-time Pro Bowl and two-time first-team All Pro fullback who was voted the Most Valuable Player of Super Bowl VIII. He followed his friend’s remarkable career closely.

“My dad figured out a path for him because when he talked to me about it, he said, ‘This kid’s going to be a great football player someday,’” Dr. Saltis said. “I think he took a special interest in Larry because he saw that he had so much potential, and it worked out that way, didn’t it?

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“When he first came onto the field, the rest of us were like these skinny, underdeveloped, almost prepubescent-type guys, and this guy takes the field, and I said, ‘Look how big that kid’s legs are!’ He was huge and muscular even then ― and fast. We got to watch it all through high school, too. It was really fun.”

Csonka said Saltis “turned my life around” through mentorship.

Three years before Saltis died in 1990 at the age of 80, he attended Csonka’s induction into the Hall of Fame in Canton. In the memoir’s epilogue, Csonka noted he had asked Saltis to stand and be recognized during the ceremony.

“It’s sort of been nice and refreshing to hear all the stuff again in that book,” Dr. Saltis said.

The dedication page of Csonka’s memoir reads, “For my parents, who instilled in me my love of nature and provided the farm life that shaped me. And for Mr. Saltis, who saw the promise in me and set me on my path.”

Larry Csonka on his relationship with Don Shula

The late Don Shula was also one of the most important people in Csonka’s life. The two clashed as coach and player with the Dolphins, but they grew to admire one another, too. They went to three consecutive Super Bowls together, losing to end the 1971 season before winning in 1972 and 1973. The 1972 Dolphins went 17-0 and remain the only team in NFL history to complete a season undefeated and untied.

Csonka offered a revelation about Shula in the book. The coach had granted Csonka a confidential blessing after he had signed with the World Football League in 1974 along with Dolphins teammates Jim Kiick and Paul Warfield, a Hall of Famer the Browns traded to Miami in 1970. It’s one of the reasons Csonka said he signed up for a second tour with the Dolphins in 1979 before retiring as a player the following year at age 33.

Another of Csonka’s favorite Shula anecdotes is about the Hall of Fame coach’s refusal to look at an Oakland Raiders defensive game plan Csonka had found in a locker room before the two teams met early in the 1973 season. The Dolphins lost 12-7 and watched their 18-game winning streak evaporate.

“It’s easy to say we’re going to take the high road always, but when you’re there and it’s time to make the decision, when push comes to shove, Shula was what he was about,” Csonka said. “He wasn’t a phony. He didn’t say change the pressure in the ball. He lived what he preached. Now, I didn’t necessarily believe that when I met him. I didn’t necessarily believe it for two or three years. But he, in fact, was that solid.”

Larry Csonka has Akron roots and a notable Beacon Journal connection

Csonka and Shula found common ground in being Ohio natives of Hungarian descent. Shula was born in Grand River and attended John Carroll University. He died in 2020 at the age of 90.

On Christmas Day 1946, Csonka was born at Akron City Hospital. His parents, Mildred and Joseph Csonka, had met in 1936 at a downtown Akron movie theater and moved their family to Progress Park Drive in Stow when he was 4 to 6 months old.

Csonka has five siblings, three older and two younger, though he grew up by himself to some degree because of a gap in their ages he attributes to World War II. By age 4 or 5, Csonka was assigned chores on the family farm purchased through the GI Bill by his dad, an Army veteran who worked at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. for 35 years. He would milk and care for livestock, roaming the property with a pack of dogs between tasks, collecting wildlife and making them pets.

“I saw one school bus before the day I got on a school bus,” Csonka said. “I guess what you might say is we were kind of out back and didn’t leave the farm much until I was probably 10, 11 years old and started getting out on a bicycle and delivering papers and doing different things.”

Which newspaper did Csonka deliver?

“Akron Beacon Journal. Never forget that, buddy,” he said with a laugh. “I picked those suckers up and put them in a bag, fell off bicycles with them, delivered them in people’s mailboxes, got bit by a dog. The whole gig was a paperboy routine.”

From Northeast Ohio to Syracuse

Csonka’s upbringing matured him because he had responsibilities at a young age, yet it also stunted his socialization skills, he said.

At Syracuse University, he excelled in football enough for the Dolphins to deem him worthy of a first-round draft pick (No. 8 overall) in 1968, but he struggled to fit in otherwise. He had a low tolerance for the shenanigans of fraternity pledges and found himself in a dean’s office more than once because of physical altercations.

Csonka married his high school sweetheart, Pam Conley, and lived off campus with her during his final two years at Syracuse. They had two sons, Doug and Paul.

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Csonka also has a daughter, Lori, as a result of agreeing to serve as a donor for a couple who had asked him to help them conceive in 1974. The pact stipulated Csonka wouldn’t be involved with raising the child.

In the memoir, Csonka explained he didn’t consult Pam about the decision or reveal it to her until many years after they had agreed in the mid-1980s to a divorce. He didn’t enter Lori’s life until 2000 after she had sent him a letter. He expressed regret in the book for hardships Lori endured as a child and any pain he caused Pam, though he conceded he held back.

“I stayed away from the emotional parts of divorce and all the different things [in the memoir],” Csonka said. “What good does that serve, really? I suppose it makes you more human. Maybe it makes you a little less human. I don’t know. I didn’t get into all that. But what I wanted to cover was the unique personalities I ran into ― Mr. Saltis, my grandmother, Shula, the list goes on and on.”

Larry Csonka has long aspired to share his tales about living on the wild side

Grandmother Heath, otherwise known as “MumMum,” planted a seed for Csonka to live his life on the edge.

In an effort to assuage a 5-year-old Csonka’s fears about encountering the boogeyman while venturing into the dark en route to the family’s outhouse, “MumMum” informed the little boy of a startling secret ― he was the boogeyman.

“She never told me a lie ever, so I believed her,” Csonka said. “And from that point on, I was what everybody was afraid of in the dark.

“Once I realized that it was just as easy to be the bad guy as the good guy, I shouldn’t say bad and good, I should say happy or sad or afraid or initiating fear, once I realized there was a balance, and it was pretty much up to you to decide, I leaned that way.”

Csonka’s wild spirit led him to Alaska in the mid-1990s with his life and business partner, Audrey Bradshaw. Together they produced several outdoor adventure television shows. They sold their place in Alaska about seven months ago, Csonka said, and bought another property in North Carolina near the Nantahala National Forest, so they could see his five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren much more.

Csonka also has homes in Florida, along the Indian River south of Daytona Beach, and Lisbon, Ohio, where he and his older brother, Joe, bought a farm. Csonka plans to live in Alaska four to six weeks a year. He visits Ohio frequently.

“I like to sit in the woods and listen and still hear the same critters that I heard when I was a kid,” he said.

Asked what he hopes readers of his book glean from it, Csonka said, “An appreciation of nature and life and the cards it deals you and learning to play the cards you’re dealt. Things happen. I just reacted as it went along, from Mr. Saltis confining me to quarters to having to read books and write reports to deciding to go to Alaska.”

Csonka had wanted to write a book for decades. Working on “Always on the Run” with dear friend Kiick and author Dave Anderson during the Dolphins’ heyday gave him a satisfying taste of the publishing process. Bradshaw kept reminding Csonka he had decided in 2005 on the night they were rescued by the Coast Guard from a ship in the Bering Sea he would share his memories. In the end, accounts of many of his experiences were left on the cutting room floor.

Larry Csonka shares his high school football memories

Included in the book are some of Csonka’s showdowns with local high school football teams, including Archbishop Hoban, Tallmadge and Ravenna. An entertaining story not told in the memoir is about him chasing a Kent Roosevelt player who fled into the stands at Lakeview Stadium in Stow.

“He was dancing down the sidelines to show off,” Csonka said. “Back then, that was not the thing to do in front of the other school’s stands. He was having a pretty good game, but he just was doing a little show for our stands, and it pissed me off. So I chased him, but luckily I didn’t catch him.”

Perhaps it will be in Csonka’s next book.

“I’d like to do one on Alaska,” he said. “I certainly wouldn’t hesitate to expand on the memoir because, man, we only put a quarter of what happened in there.”

Nate Ulrich can be reached at [email protected].

On Twitter: @ByNateUlrich.

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