Meet 90s ice hockey legend Mario Lemieux's devoted wife of 33 years and their four children

The NHL star met his wife in 1982 and it was love at first sight for the pair, who tied the knot the following year at Notre Dame Basilica in Montreal, Nathalie’s hometown. The couple were already parents to two-month old daughter Lauren, who attended the lavish affair alongside almost 400 guests.

Mario has previously gushed about how Nathalie helped him through both his career and health problems; the Hall of Fame player previously battled Hodgkin’s disease in 1993 and later a heart problem, one of the catalysts for his retirement in 2006.

"With the back infection, she was my nurse for three months," he told Maclean's Magazine in 1996, per The Canadian Encyclopedia. "She learned how to do the intravenous and all that other stuff. She was there every day."

The couple are also co-founders of the Mario Lemieux Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to cancer research following Mario’s own battle.

Mario’s eldest daughter Lauren has carved out her own path in the hockey world. She is currently the Manager of Partnership Marketing for her father’s former team, the Pittsburgh Penguins, combining her love of the game with a finance degree from Babson College.

Lauren is also closely involved with the Mario Lemieux Foundation, where she launched Club 66, an organisation connecting young professionals in Pittsburgh. She also helped establish a program that delivers blankets to patients at the Mario Lemieux Center for Blood Cancers at UPMC Hillman, alongside a heartfelt note from “The Magnificent One” himself.

After playing hockey as a teen, including a season with the Pittsburgh Penguins Elite U19, Stephanie went on to play hockey at Boston University. After which, she founded a children’s clothing brand called Little Moo, and partnered with her father’s foundation to raise money for cancer research.

“I wanted to include philanthropy with the brand just because those values were instilled in me from as far back as I can remember,” she told Pitt To The Point, also revealing that the brand’s name is a play on her famous last name.

The only son of the Lemieux family, Austin was born three months premature and spent 71 days in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, inspiring Mario and Nathalie to found Austin’s Playrooms, which provides children with playrooms on hospital wards.

Following in his father’s footsteps, Austin pursued a professional hockey career, playing for Arizona State and setting his sights on the Penguins. "I think anyone that plays college hockey has the NHL in mind," he previously told the NHL; the sportsman has since discovered a love of golf, and was pursuing it professionally as of 2023. 

The youngest of the Lemieux clan, Alexa is currently working as a Real Estate Agent in New York, according to her LinkedIn profile, after studying at the University of Southern California. She also previously made her film debut in the sports comedy Odd Man Rush (2020) alongside Wayne Gretzky’s son Trevor. 

Alexa revealed to the NHL that she took acting classes alongside her degree, and had even had an acting coach as a teenager. “Ever since I was a little girl it's all I wanted to do,” she shared, adding that it was “really special for my first film to be a hockey movie”.