He is only 23 years old and has started only 12 NFL games, but second-year quarterback Drake Maye already carries the future of the New England Patriots on his back — or in his right arm, which is rated by experts as among the league’s strongest.
With the Patriots finishing at 4-13 last season, for the second year in a row, and obviously coming nowhere close to the playoffs, Maye had plenty of time in the offseason to take two huge steps for his own, personal future outside of football.
In January he proposed to his longtime girlfriend, Ann Michael Hudson. And then, in June, he married her.
Here’s what you need to know about Drake Maye’s wife, who now goes by Ann Michael Maye.
She Started Dating Maye When Both Were 12 Years Old
The couple’s story is one of a true childhood sweethearts who made their love last.
Age 22 seems like an early stage to make a lifetime commitment, at least these days, but Maye and the former Hudson already had 10 years together to feel comfortable that they were doing the right thing.
They met and formed a relationship at age 12, and continued to date throughout their years at William Amos Hough High School in Cornelius, North Carolina, a suburb of Charlotte.
Their teenage romance continued when Maye transferred to Myers Park High School in Charlotte, to work with coach Scott Chadwick who saw Maye’s talent and awarded him the starting quarterback’s role, something that was not happening at Hough.
When Maye was recruited to play quarterback at the University of North Carolina, Hudson enrolled at the same school, and their romance continued.
Ann Michael is Also an Athlete
Maye comes from an athletic family, considered the North Carolina equivalent of the Manning family as statewide sports icons. His older brother Luke helped lead the Tar Heels basketball teem to the 2017 national championship.
But Hudson also played multiple competitive sports, captaining her high school softball, field hockey and cheerleading teams. In college, she served as coach for an under-10 girls’ softball team in Chapel Hill.
She Was Vice-President of her Sorority
At UNC, Hudson joined Kappa Delta, a sorority founded in 1897 in Virginia that now has chapters on 167 college campuses.
She served as the Chapel Hill branch’s vice-president of finance, a job that entailed overseeing “all financial activities for the Beta Chi chapter of Kappa Delta Sorority.”
She also tracked all “monthly dues for more than 200 members,” and oversaw budgeting and payments for sorority events, according to her LinkedIn page.
Her Brother Was Teammates With Maye on the Tar Heels
Tad Hudson, Ann Michael’s brother, also played the quarterback position at the University of North Carolina. Unfortunately for him, he was stuck behind a rising Tar Heels star in 2023, who would a year later become the No. 3 overall pick in the NFL draft.
That starting quarterback blocking Tad Hudson’s path was, of course, Drake Maye — Tad’s future brother-in-law.
Tad then transferred to Costal Carolina University in South Carolina.
She is Focused on Business, but is Community-Minded
Hudson graduated from UNC Ins 2025 with a a bachelor’s degree in business administration. She now attends the university’s Kenan Flagler Business School, according to her LinkedIn page. But she was a member of the National Honors society in high school, as well as an “active member of Sources of Strength, a national suicide prevention program that sought to improve the mental health of students.”
While she will undoubtedly pursue a career of her own in business, she will also have plenty of financial matters to handle at home with her longtime boyfriend, who is now her new husband, bringing home a guaranteed $36,639,764 over four years from his contract with the Patriots.
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