Oklahoma Coach Brent Venables Says Wife Had Recent Surgery After Cancer's Return

After Julie Venables said in March that she was cancer free, the Sooners' coach said Monday that it returned in May and she had surgery last week to remove a tumor.

Oklahoma coach Brent Venables / John E. Hoover / Sooners On SI

Oklahoma coach Brent Venables revealed awful news on Monday night during his weekly coach’s show.

His wife Julie’s cancer is back, Venables announced, and she had a surgical procedure last week to remove a tumor.

“Last Monday she had surgery to remove her lymph nodes and her tumor, and she’s doing amazing. Her spirit and her strength, just nothing short of amazing,” Venables told co-hosts Toby Rowland and Teddy Lehman in in front of a live audience, a statewide radio audience and “Sooner Sports Talk” viewers on SEC Network+. 

“We’ve got a great team and great faith. It’s in God’s hands. But a big part of that battle is her wanting us to fight and keep swinging, so that’s what she’s doing.”

Julie Venables told The Oklahoman in March that recent tests showed she had “zero cancer” after her original diagnosis in June 2023 and initial surgery in August.

Venables missed last Wednesday’s SEC coaches teleconference because of what was called an “immovable conflict,” per an OU spokesman. He also was unable to attend post-practice media interviews scheduled for Wednesday night during OU's bye week.

Venables was at OU's practice, but his absence from media interviews came just one day after athletic director Joe Castiglione and president Joe Harroz told media following a regularly scheduled meeting of the OU Board of Regents that they had full confidence in Venables as OU’s head coach moving forward toward the end of a difficult season in which the Sooners are 5-5 in Venables' third season as a head coach.

The post-regents comments and the missed media sessions fueled unnecessary speculation about Venables’ job status, but he was with his ailing wife, which multiple sources confirmed to Sooners On SI last week.

While Venables' team has had a difficult season on the field, his family's strife has helped put football in perspective for OU's legions of passionate fans.

Oklahoma has lost five of its six conference games during its first season in the SEC. OU is 5-5 overall and needs one win to extend a 25-year bowl streak, but the Sooners are 14-point underdogs at home to No. 7-ranked Alabama, and don't figure to be favored next week in the regular-season finale at LSU. OU and Bama kick off at 6:30 p.m. on ABC.

Venables and his team will be focused on the Crimson Tide, but their minds will never be too far from Julie's situation.

“She’s doing good,” Brent Venables said on the show. “Back in May she went through some testing and had some elevated blood work, so got it checked out, and her cancer had returned. So we put together a really good game plan and consulted with lots of people. Went to New York City, they got a really good specialty hospital there. So the last several months, she’s been going back and forth doing her chemo treatments there.”

Monday was Julie's third cancer surgery, including one last summer and another in November.

Brent and Julie Venables met as students at Kansas State. They married in July 1997 and have four children: sons Jake and Tyler (a safety at Clemson University) and daughters Laney and Addie.