Janet Condra: Where Is Larry Bird’s Ex-Wife Now?

Janet Condra is best known as the first wife of Larry Bird, one of the greatest basketball players of all time. They married as teenagers in Indiana in 1975, long before Bird became a Boston Celtics legend, and their marriage lasted less than a year.

So where is Janet Condra now? The honest answer is that she lives privately, and no strong source gives her current address or daily life. This article explains what is documented about her, her marriage, and her daughter Corrie, and it answers the where is she now question as far as the real record allows.

Quick Facts

French Lick Roots and a High School Romance

Janet Condra comes from French Lick, a small town in southern Indiana. It is the same small town that produced Larry Bird, and that shared home ground is where their story begins. Reports on their early life describe them as high school sweethearts at Springs Valley High School in French Lick. That detail is repeated across many accounts of Bird’s early life, and it fits the well documented picture of Bird as a small town Indiana player who stayed close to his roots.

Bird’s own background is a matter of full public record. He grew up in a working class family in French Lick and nearby West Baden, became a local basketball star, and after a short and unhappy spell at Indiana University, he rebuilt his path at Indiana State University. His college run carried Indiana State to the famous 1979 national title game against Magic Johnson and Michigan State, and he then joined the Boston Celtics, where he won three championships and three most valuable player awards.

Janet’s early life, by contrast, is barely documented. Her parents, her exact birth date, and her childhood beyond the French Lick school link are not given in strong sources. Some websites print an estimated birth year, but the estimates disagree with each other, and some are impossible against a marriage in 1975. So this article does not state an age for her.

What is solid is the setting. In the mid 1970s, Janet and Larry were two young people from the same small Indiana town, in a relationship that began at school, at a time when Bird was a promising local player and nothing more. Nobody involved could have known that within five years he would be one of the most famous athletes in America.

A Marriage That Lasted Less Than a Year

Wikipedia’s account of Bird’s personal life, drawn from published sources on his life, states the core facts simply. In 1975, Bird married Janet Condra. They remained married for less than a year. That short sentence is the strongest summary available, and most fuller accounts agree with it.

Secondary sources commonly give exact dates: a wedding on November 8, 1975, and a divorce on October 31, 1976. Those dates appear in many profiles of Janet and of Corrie Bird, and they match the less than a year outline. They are widely reported rather than drawn from a public document in this research, so they are best read as the accepted reported dates, not as dates this article has verified from a court record.

Bird was about 19 at the time of the marriage and a college player still finding his way. His path in those years was unsettled: he had left Indiana University quickly, spent time back home in French Lick, and then started again at Indiana State. A teenage marriage, college pressure, and a fast rising sports career made a hard mix, and the marriage ended while he was still a student, years before his first Celtics game in 1979.

Bird later wrote about his life in his autobiography, Drive: The Story of My Life, published in 1989, which touches on his first marriage along with his childhood and his triumphs on the court. He has not made a public habit of discussing Janet in interviews, and she has not discussed him. The short marriage is a documented chapter in his early life, and both of them have treated the detail of it as private ever since.

Mother of Corrie Bird

The lasting link between Janet Condra and Larry Bird is their daughter. Wikipedia records that, following an attempted reconciliation, Bird and Condra had a daughter, Corrie, in 1977. Secondary reports give her full name as Corrie Bird and her birth date as August 14, 1977. She is Larry Bird’s only biological child.

Corrie was raised mainly by Janet in Indiana. Accounts of Corrie’s life, including her own past comments reported in sports coverage, describe a childhood in which her father was largely absent, with his role limited mainly to child support in her early years. Bird himself has been quoted in past reporting as saying he thought about Corrie often, but that he could not go back and relive the first years of her life, and that his differences with Janet were part of why he had not had much to do with her early life.

A warmer moment came much later. Reports describe a meeting during the 1997 to 1998 season, when Bird was coaching the Indiana Pacers, at a Pacers game Corrie attended. That meeting is reported to have been helped along by Bird’s wife Dinah. Corrie was reported at the time as saying she was happy to go to the game and that her father walked her to her car and hugged her. What their relationship is today is private, and this article does not guess at it.

For Janet, the motherhood chapter is the center of her documented life. She raised a daughter as a largely single mother in Indiana while the girl’s father became one of the most famous sportsmen in the country. Reports credit her with giving Corrie a stable upbringing away from that fame. She did not sell her story, write a book, or build a public name from the connection, even when public interest in Bird was at its highest during the Celtics years of the 1980s.

Life After the Divorce

What did Janet Condra do with the rest of her life? On the public record, very little can be stated with confidence, and that is the truthful answer to give. She stepped away from public attention after the divorce and stayed away. There are no interviews with her in major outlets, no memoir, and no confirmed public accounts in her name.

Some secondary websites report a second marriage for her, naming a husband and even a second child. Those claims are not confirmed by strong sources, and the sites repeating them do not show their evidence. This article mentions them only to mark them as unconfirmed. Readers who meet a detailed account of her later marriages, jobs, or income on a small biography site should treat it as unverified unless a real source is shown.

The same caution covers money. Various sites print net worth figures for Janet Condra, ranging widely and sometimes reaching into millions. None of those figures comes with financial evidence. She has no documented public business or media career, and any divorce or support arrangements from the 1970s are not public documents in this research. The honest statement is simple: her personal finances are not publicly known, and any exact figure printed elsewhere is an estimate at best.

It is also worth noting what did not happen. Bird married Dinah Mattingly in 1989, and they adopted two children, Conner and Mariah, who are Corrie’s half siblings through adoption. Janet is sometimes confused online with Dinah, the long term wife who has appeared beside Bird at public events for decades. They are two different people. Janet is the first wife from the French Lick years, and Dinah is the wife of Bird’s Celtics and later life.

Where Is Janet Condra Now?

This is the question in the title, and it deserves a straight answer. Janet Condra’s current whereabouts are not publicly documented. No strong source gives a current town, workplace, or recent public appearance for her. Reports generally describe her as living a quiet, private life, with Indiana or the wider Midwest offered as a likely area, but even that is presented by those sources as a guess rather than a confirmed fact.

That privacy has lasted nearly fifty years, through Bird’s playing career, his coaching years, and his time as a team executive. In all that time, Janet has not stepped forward, and there is no sign she wants public attention now.

So the real story of Janet Condra now is a life lived on her own terms, away from a fame that touched her only briefly and very young. She was a French Lick teenager who married a local basketball player in 1975, became a mother in 1977, raised her daughter in Indiana, and then lived privately while her former husband became a legend. The record supports each part of that sentence, and it supports very little beyond it.

For fans reading Bird’s story, her chapter still matters. His rise began in a small town with ordinary young lives around him, and Janet’s life was changed by a short marriage and then spent, deliberately, out of view. That choice is the clearest fact about where she is now: wherever she is, she is private, and she intends to stay that way.

FAQs

When did Janet Condra marry Larry Bird?

They married in 1975. Secondary sources commonly give the date as November 8, 1975, and Wikipedia confirms they were married for less than a year. The commonly reported divorce date is October 31, 1976.

Does Janet Condra have children?

Yes. She is the mother of Corrie Bird, born in 1977 after an attempted reconciliation with Larry Bird. Corrie is Bird’s only biological child, and she was raised mainly by Janet in Indiana.

Where is Janet Condra now?

Her current whereabouts are not publicly documented. She has lived a very private life since the 1970s, with no confirmed public appearances or social media presence. Reports that name a specific current town or home for her are unverified.

What is Janet Condra’s net worth?

There is no verified figure. Websites print widely different estimates without financial evidence, so none of them should be treated as fact. Her personal finances are not publicly known.

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Final Thoughts

Janet Condra’s documented story is short and clear: a French Lick high school romance, a marriage in 1975 that lasted less than a year, a daughter, Corrie, in 1977, and then a private life that has lasted for decades. The question of where she is now has no public answer beyond that privacy, and this article has not invented one. Sometimes the most respectful and most accurate ending is also the simplest one: she stepped away from fame before it fully arrived, and she has stayed away ever since.

Featured photo: Larry Bird – photo by City of Boston Archives, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons