Luba Cherry: Don Cherry's Wife, Her Age and the Life She Keeps Private

Who is Luba Cherry?

Luba Cherry is the second wife of Don Cherry, the Canadian hockey coach and broadcaster who hosted Coach's Corner on Hockey Night in Canada for 38 years. She married him in 1999 and has been with him through every major event of his later career: the firing, the podcast, the family losses and the feuds.

She is not a public figure in her own right. She has never given an interview. She does not appear on red carpets, does not post on social media, and is almost never photographed with her husband at official events. That is not an accident. It is a choice she and Don appear to have made early in the marriage.

The most revealing thing Don Cherry ever said about her came in 2009, when he spoke to the National Post ahead of a CBC film about his life. "Most people don't know I remarried," he said. "And it must be tough on Luba. Everybody thinks I am still single and all that, but she puts up with that." That one sentence explains more about her than any birth year could.

How old is Luba Cherry?

This is the question people search most, and the honest answer is that no one outside her family knows for certain. Luba Cherry has never confirmed her birth date in an interview, a public record or a verified profile. Some unofficial listings report a 1955 birth year, which would place her around 70 or 71 in 2026. But those listings are not sourced and have never been verified by her or by the family.

What can be said with confidence is narrower. She was an adult when she met Don Cherry in the late 1990s. They married in 1999. She has now been married to him for more than 25 years. Everything beyond that is inference, and any site that states a specific age as fact is guessing.

This page does not publish a number it cannot verify. If a verified birth date ever becomes public, it will be added here and the update will be logged in the corrections note at the bottom.

How Don Cherry and Luba Cherry met

Don Cherry's first wife, Rosemarie, died of liver cancer on June 1, 1997, after roughly 40 years of marriage. Don has described that period as one of the hardest of his life. Luba came into his life around that time. The family's account, repeated in several interviews, is that they met in 1997 and married two years later.

The wedding in 1999 was private. It was not widely publicised, and even a decade later Don was saying that many Canadians did not realise he had remarried. That detail matters because it explains the entire shape of her public life since: she has never been part of the Don Cherry brand.

• 1957Don Cherry marries Rosemarie Cherry.
• June 1, 1997Rosemarie dies of liver cancer.
• 1997Don and Luba meet, according to the family's account.
• 1999Don and Luba marry in a private ceremony.
• 2009Don speaks publicly about the marriage for the first time in a National Post interview tied to the CBC film Keep Your Head Up Kid.
• November 2019Sportsnet fires Don Cherry. Luba stays out of the public reaction.
• 2019 to 2025Don hosts Don Cherry's Grapevine Podcast with his son Tim. Luba remains private.
• July 15, 2024Don's daughter Cindy dies at 67. Luba is part of the family's private grieving.
• July 2025Don says publicly that Luba does not want Ron MacLean in their home.

Why Luba Cherry stays private

Don Cherry has been one of the most recognisable people in Canada since the 1980s. His voice, his jackets and his opinions were a Saturday night ritual for decades. Being married to that person means being asked about it constantly, and Luba Cherry has simply declined.

There are only a handful of moments where her presence has been reported at all. In 2017, the National Post reported that she had shown Don old tapes of his own work and told him he used to be better, which he credited with pushing him to sharpen up. In 2025, after his falling out with Ron MacLean, Don said plainly that Luba did not want MacLean in their home.

Those two details are almost the entire public record of her opinions. That is not a gap in the reporting. It is the result of a decision she has kept for more than two decades.

Luba Cherry and Ron MacLean

The 2025 fallout between Don Cherry and his former Coach's Corner partner Ron MacLean is the only recent story where Luba has been named. In July 2025, MacLean gave an interview in which he linked Cherry's 2019 departure to a pneumonia scare during the 2019 Stanley Cup Final. Cherry responded angrily through the Toronto Sun.

In that response he said his wife was angrier than he was. According to Cherry, Luba said MacLean was not welcome in their home and should not contact them. It was the first time in years that her view on anything had been reported publicly.

Don Cherry's first wife, Rosemarie

To understand Luba's place in the family, you have to understand Rose. Rosemarie Cherry was married to Don from 1957 until her death on June 1, 1997. They raised two children, Cindy and Tim. Don has said he could not watch the scenes in the CBC film where an actress played Rose because she looked too much like her.

Her name is still attached to places across Ontario. The Darling Home for Kids in Milton was formerly called Rose Cherry's Home for Kids. Rose Cherry Place in Mississauga is named after her. Luba married into a family where the first wife is still publicly honoured, and by every account she has handled that with grace.

Luba Cherry's family and stepchildren

When Luba married Don in 1999, she became stepmother to his two adult children. Both are now part of the public record in their own right, and one of them is no longer living.

Luba Cherry's maiden name and early life

Her maiden name has never been disclosed. Neither has her hometown, her career before marriage, or her family background. This is not a case of a fact being hard to find. It is a case of a person who has never put that information into the public record, and whose family has respected that.

Search results for her name often pull in a different Luba. The Canadian singer Luba was born Lubomyra Kowalchyk in Montreal in 1958 and is a completely separate person. Other results mix her up with Holocaust survivors, lawyers and public records that have nothing to do with her.

If a site claims to know her maiden name, it is almost certainly guessing or repeating an unsourced forum post.

Where is Luba Cherry now?

Luba Cherry lives in Mississauga, Ontario, with her husband. Don has referred to their home in the Greater Toronto Area in interviews over the years, including a 2024 conversation with the Whig-Standard. She stayed out of the public eye through his firing in 2019, through the launch and end of his podcast, and through the family's loss of Cindy in 2024.

There is no indication that she plans to change that. At 92, Don Cherry is still occasionally in the news. Luba Cherry is not, and that appears to be exactly how she wants it.

In her husband's words

• Most people don't know I remarried. And it must be tough on Luba. Everybody thinks I am still single and all that, but she puts up with that.

  Don Cherry, National Post, 2009

• You know, I don't know how a guy can get so fortunate twice in life.

  Don Cherry, reflecting on his two marriages

• As far as Cherry's wife Luba is concerned, MacLean is not welcome in their home.

  Reported account of Don Cherry's July 2025 comments

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