Twitter: Long-time Cowboys Executive Assistant Marylyn Love has passed away

IRVING -- The best "shutdown cornerback" in Cowboys history still prowls the halls of team headquarters at Valley Ranch.

At least that's how Deion Sanders, himself a Pro Football Hall of Fame cornerback, references Marylyn Love, a widowed grandmother who oozes charm, prefers anonymity to flaunting her smarts and never has been penalized for a blind-side hit.

Love, who may stretch all the way to 5-foot, 4-inches, is the gatekeeper for the Cowboys owner, president and general manager. Officially, her title is "executive assistant." More apt, said her boss, Jerry Jones, might be "executive advisor."

Jones said he would "quit" should the 74-year-old Love ever tell him she is retiring. Hyperbole? Probably. Still, he conceded it would take a cadre of skilled loyalists to replace his primary sounding board, who can be found anchored to a desk 30 feet away from his or tethered to his cellphone.

To get to Jerry Jones -- in the flesh or on the phone - just about everyone has to go through Love, who dutifully has her boss's after-hours business calls forwarded to her. Players, coaches, media, fellow NFL owners, commissioners, movie stars, captains of industry, sheiks and former U.S. presidents all have come to learn that Love holds the key.

To those whom Love allows completions, Jones has a standard response to any question asking for more of his time or for something more tangible. It's a simple, eight-word phrase that has resonated throughout Valley Ranch during Jones' 27 years of occupancy: "Just get with Marylyn, she'll handle the details."

Of course, Jones reaches out as well. Among the phone numbers Love has committed to memory over the years are those of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, a "who's who" of NFL owners headlined by the New England Patriots' Robert Kraft, Cowboys coaches and just about anyone with a title at Valley Ranch.

"Photographic memory," Jones responds instantly when asked what makes Love so valuable.

But he is only getting warmed up. There are far more important and intricate numbers than those attached to telephones. Jones cited Love's intimate recall of Cowboys revenue streams down to the last penny. She parses player contracts before they go to the lawyers and the league. She also can recite, chapter and verse, Jones' other revenue streams. For example, Jones said, she knows everything about everyone he deals with in his still-substantial oil-and-gas and real estate businesses. She can recite names and contracts with instant recall.

The collective bargaining agreement with NFL players? Nobody can decipher complicated legalese like Love, Jones said. On the flip side, there is Love's relationship with Cowboys players. Over the decades many of them have come to refer to her as the "team mom." To some, like Dez Bryant, who for a time may have had trouble keeping personal finances straight, Jones recommended she mind their bank accounts.

On Thanksgiving Eve, former Cowboys defensive back Adam Jones, now with the Cincinnati Bengals, sent Love a simple text. "Love you so much," he wrote with a picture of him and his daughter attached. "And tell boss hello."

"She has common sense," Jones said. "She is very conservative. She doesn't hesitate to point out that I am overdoing this or overdoing that."

The Love approach to Jones' excess?

"She will say, 'I believe I would look at that again if I were you.'" Jones said. "And trust me, I look again."

Getting through Love to Jones is simple arithmetic compared with the calculus of getting past Love's defensive skills when a notepad or tape recorder is pointed in her direction. Although she has sat ringside every season since Jones bought the Cowboys in 1989, she has deflected all previous requests to interview her.

Three times she postponed sitting down for this story. Three times she cited her workload. Three times she apologized so profusely in her folksy Oklahoma twang, she made the interviewer feel guilty for even asking in the first place. When the session was finally cemented, it was on a day Jones was out of town and at a late hour when she remained the lone Cowboys employee in Valley Ranch's executive wing.

Note: Valley Ranch lore has it that no one has ever seen Love leave work for the day, because she outlasts them all. She has the reserved parking spot closest to the entrance. But who would know? She gets to work early enough every day to claim any spot.

In the voluminous electronic files of past Dallas Morning News stories, the name "Marylyn Love" appears only five times dating to 1990. Four are merely passing references of her doing something for Jones. The fifth is an actual quote.

It appeared in a 1996 lifestyle column before a Cowboys-Green Bay Packers playoff game. Asked if Jones had received in the mail all the cheese that Packers fans had promised to send, Love responded: "It hasn't been much. I'm glad."

Told on Thanksgiving Eve that she actually had been quoted once before in the pages of The News, an incredulous Love was curious to parse the words.

"You know," she responded with a sigh of relief, "I never meant to be quoted."

A wiz at details
1-28-94: Dallas Cowboy's owner Jerry Jones (R) listens to his personal secretary, Marylyn...
1-28-94: Dallas Cowboy's owner Jerry Jones (R) listens to his personal secretary, Marylyn Love in his office at Valley Ranch. (File Photo)
Marylyn Love, born and raised in Oklahoma City, was an established paralegal, having worked her way up from secretary, at a prominent law firm there back in 1979. On a fateful summer day, her firm was representing a bank at a closing of a hefty loan with an Arkansas oilman.

Lots of money was at stake. Lots of questions were asked.

Sometime during the wheeling and dealing, Jones decided he had to cut a separate deal. Jones said he could hardly wait for the proceedings to end so he could approach the paralegal on the other side of the table.

"She knew more about all the details needed to close the loan than all the bankers in the room," Jones said. "She was instructing them what to look for, what to read. To this day, she is the finest reader [of legal documents] and can basically summarize a contract or a long agreement better than anybody I have ever been associated with."

And so Love, the divorced mother of two sons and a daughter, who never before had been recruited, moved over to work for the Little Rock-based Jones out of an Oklahoma City office.

Shuttling back and forth to Little Rock became part of her routine even as she raised her children. On weekends, the family sometimes treated itself with a trip down to Irving to watch their beloved Dallas Cowboys. They sat in the cheap seats atop Texas Stadium and were never discouraged by the excessive heat of summer or the whipping cold winds that followed them from Oklahoma.

"She has always loved the game," daughter Laura Fryar said. "That's why what eventually happened was so fitting."

Almost a decade after Love signed on with Jones, the oil-and-gas man one day confided he was going to buy the Cowboys.

"I could not believe it," she said. "I said, 'No way.'" But deep down she wondered, "What if?"

Soon after, Jones bought the Cowboys in February 1989.

In April, he signed his first draft choice, Troy Aikman.

In June, he asked Love to join him at Valley Ranch. At first it was only to help out three days a week, which left her two to do all the work in the Oklahoma City office.

In October, Jones asked Love to make the Cowboys headquarters her full-time workplace.

"It was chaotic, because there was so much to learn back then," said Carol Padgett, Jones' original Valley Ranch assistant whom he brought from Little Rock. When a son's illness made shuttling back and forth impossible for Padgett, Jones turned to Love.

"You could see Marylyn as the calm in the storm," Padgett said. "Jerry came to depend on her completely. He loves loyalty. Marylyn is loyal."

When Padgett was ready to return to work, it was as the assistant to Valley Ranch's No. 2 man, Stephen Jones, before she slid over to run the Cowboys ticket department.

A steady presence


Jerry Jones said one of Love's greatest assets is the ability "to compartmentalize." He always marveled at the way she balanced her responsibilities as a mother with the workload he foisted upon her. Through sickness and family trauma, she never missed a beat on the job.

"She has had tragedies," Jones said. "That has made her completely psychologically unshakeable. Her strength is unshakeable."

Love agreed with Jones' assessment but preferred to not talk about some issues in her personal life.

But she did mention the divorce that left her a single mother and the death of her second husband, Cecil Love, in 2011.

Oldest son Mark died of cancer in December 2012. He was 50 and left behind a family. Jones had the arrangements taken care of. He put his private jet at the Love family's convenience, shuttling family members from around the country to the funeral. Several Valley Ranch employees took care of the rest. It was unusual for the fact that for once there was a death in the Cowboys family where Love wasn't totally in charge.

Love lives about 2 1/2 miles from Cowboys headquarters. She doesn't know what she will do when the organization relocates to Frisco before next season. She supposes she will report for duty in a new office.

"I could say Valley Ranch has been a second home to me," Love said. "But really it's like a first home, because I am here so much."

For a brief moment she appears to contemplate what life would be like away from her desk and untethered from her cellphone. She still owns a home in Oklahoma City, where she spent Thanksgiving with family and friends. Still on Friday, she was on the phone, helping Jones with his scheduling.

Laura Fryar, her daughter who graduated from TCU and went to work for the Cowboys as an intern, is firmly established as Jason Garrett's assistant just as she was for Wade Phillips, Bill Parcells and Dave Campo. Her son Greg lives in Tennessee. There are plenty of grandchildren to keep her busy. Like her children and grandchildren, she also loves the Oklahoma State Cowboys.

"But this really is my life," she said back at her desk.

Still, contrary to Jones' assessment, she said, the Cowboys' machine will function without her.

"But maybe," she said, "I'll help pick my replacement."