Who Are Kenneth Walker III’s Parents? Inside Super Bowl MVP’s Brutal Childhood Workouts and the Mom & Dad Who Refused To Let Him Quit

On Sunday night in Santa Clara, Kenneth Walker III did what no running back had done since Terrell Davis. The Seattle Seahawks star gashed the New England Patriots for 135 rushing yards, added 26 more as a receiver, and walked away with Super Bowl LX MVP in a 29-13 win.Most fans saw the yards and the trophy. Fewer know how close he once came to walking away from football entirely, or how his parents dragged him through the worst stretch of his life and into this one. “If I had quit, I wouldn’t have made it this far,” Walker said during Super Bowl week, adding that “my pops and my mom… just told me not to make a decision based on emotion.”

How Mom Shaunteshia Brown kept Kenneth Walker III’s career alive

Walker grew up just outside Memphis as one of seven siblings, raised by his mother, Shaunteshia Brown, and father, Kenneth Walker II, even after they split when he was around 7.

Brown has described her son as the quiet one in a crowded house. “Kenny was the child that never asked for anything,” she said.Right before his senior year of high school, everything almost ended. Walker woke up struggling to breathe, and Brown rushed him to the hospital. Initial doctors shut him down from sports altogether. A second opinion revealed blood clots in his lungs, according to ESPN, and he spent months on blood thinners and injections while doing only non-contact work with his dad.

In a video interview cited by Town & Country, Brown recalled being told her son might never play again. She simply refused to believe that was how his story would end, and she kept his focus on recovery instead of panic. That steadiness is the same voice he leaned on when his future in Seattle became a talking point before the Super Bowl.

How Dad Kenneth Walker II turned their house into a gym and his son into an MVP

If Brown kept Walker’s mind right, his father built the engine. Kenneth Walker II worked night shifts at Rich Products in Arlington, Tenn.,

then spent his days putting his son through workouts. Walker said he started training when he was about 4 years old and never really stopped.“My dad, that’s who really instilled that in me as a kid. I probably was four when I started working out, and I worked out with my dad 24/7. There would be times when I didn’t want to work out, and he would make me. And I’m over here crying, I had tears in my eyes while we were working out,” Walker told Fox Sports.

“But it brought me to this point in my life, and I thank him for it… That’s why I put a gym in my house because I know how important it is to work hard to get to where you want to go.

”That “house as a gym” was not a figure of speech. “You go upstairs and to the left side you got ellipticals, treadmills and bikes. And then in my backyard, we had like two smaller houses, and we had a wrestling mat and more gym equipment back there. It was crazy,” he said.

His dad laughed and added, “Grown men didn’t want to do the workouts I was putting him through.”Those sessions showed up all postseason. Walker stacked 413 yards from scrimmage across three playoff wins and became the first player since Davis to top 100 scrimmage yards in every game for a Super Bowl champion. He did it in a contract year, with free agency on the horizon, while the Seahawks offense sputtered around him.