Ann-Lorraine Carlsen Nantz: The Woman Who Said No to the Oil Portrait

She never wanted to be famous. And then a Connecticut judge made her nearly a millionaire a year, and the internet couldn’t stop talking about her. Still, she said nothing. Which, depending on how you look at it, is either the most graceful move in celebrity-adjacent divorce history, or the most infuriating. Probably both.

Table of Contents

Quick Bio

Detail	Info
Full Name	Ann-Lorraine “Lorrie” Carlsen Nantz
Birthplace	United States (exact location undisclosed)
Estimated Birth Year	Late 1950s or early 1960s
Nationality	American
Known For	First wife of CBS sportscaster Jim Nantz
Married	April 16, 1983, Colts Neck, New Jersey
Divorced	November 2, 2009
Marriage Length	26 years
Daughter	Caroline Nantz (born April 29, 1994)
Divorce Settlement	~$916,000/year in alimony + child support
Current Status	Privately based in Connecticut

New Jersey, High School, and the Boy Who Would Never Stop Talking

Marlboro, New Jersey isn’t exactly the kind of place that produces legends. It produces commuters. But it did produce two people who would end up as the center of one of the messiest sports-world divorces of 2009, which, given the year that was, is saying something.

Lorrie Carlsen and Jim Nantz met at Marlboro High School. That’s it. That’s the origin story. No dramatic meet-cute, no collision in the hallway. Just two New Jersey teenagers who found each other in the way teenagers do — through proximity and time.

Jim was already the guy with the plan. Captain of the golf team, basketball co-captain, probably already practicing his cadence in the bathroom mirror. Lorrie was quieter. She’s always been quieter. That contrast would define the next four decades of her life in ways she couldn’t possibly have predicted at seventeen.

They dated. They built something. And on April 16, 1983 — in Colts Neck, New Jersey, a few miles from where they’d first met — they got married. Jim was twenty-three and hadn’t yet broken into CBS. Lorrie was marrying a guy with a dream, not a salary.

That part matters. We’ll come back to it.

The Architecture of a Marriage Nobody Noticed

Here’s what’s interesting about Lorrie Nantz. We basically know nothing about her until the divorce. Not because she did nothing — she did plenty. She moved with Jim during the lean years, made a home in Westport, Connecticut, managed the household, and waited. She waited while Jim covered Masters tournaments and Super Bowls and became the voice of Sunday afternoons for millions of people who would never know her name.

They had one child together. Caroline Nantz was born April 29, 1994 — eleven years into the marriage. Eleven years. People forget that detail. They’d been married over a decade before they had a kid.

Lorrie raised Caroline. Mostly alone, in the way that wives of traveling men have always raised kids mostly alone. Jim was on the road, in a blazer, saying things like “hello, friends” to cameras at Augusta National. Lorrie was in Westport.

She had a country club membership. A six-bedroom house. A condo at a ski resort in Utah. By every external measure, comfortable. By every internal measure — well, nobody asked her. And when they did ask her, it was in a Connecticut courtroom, and the whole story came out sideways.

The Drift

Marriages don’t explode. They drift. And then one day you look up and you’re strangers sharing a zip code.

The Nantz marriage drifted hard. Court testimony later painted the picture: Lorrie had once traveled with Jim to his events. I watched him work. Then gradually — slowly, the way these things always happen — she stopped. The career trips became his alone. The award ceremonies happened without her.

Jim Nantz, sitting on a witness stand in 2009, cried. He actually cried. He testified that in 2004, when the New York Athletic Club gave him their Man of the Year award — the same award previously given to Rudy Giuliani — his mother flew in from Houston to be there. Lorrie didn’t come. Didn’t show up.

He also got offered the hosting slot on the CBS Early Show. A massive deal. A career move that would’ve changed everything. He turned it down. Because, he said, Lorrie was against it.

Now. You can read that two ways. One: Jim Nantz was so invested in his marriage that he made career sacrifices to preserve it. Two: a guy who wanted Lorrie to be a certain kind of wife couldn’t accept that she was a different kind of person.

Probably both are true, in the exhausting way real marriages are always both things at once.

The Portrait. Yes, the Portrait.

We have to talk about the portrait.

Jim Nantz received an oil painting of himself as part of the Man of the Year award. He wanted to hang it in their home. Lorrie said no. So the painting went into storage.

This became a genuine news story. Boomer and Carton on WFAN spent time on the radio discussing whether a man has the right to hang a painting of himself in his own house. The internet had feelings. Sports blogs had takes.

And Lorrie Nantz — who apparently looked at this oil portrait of her husband and thought, “not in my house” — became briefly notorious for it.

I find this extremely relatable, for what it’s worth.

The $1,000 Necklace She Couldn’t Describe

Okay, so here’s where the divorce trial gets genuinely surreal.

Jim’s lawyers went after Lorrie’s spending. And the numbers were real: in nine years, she’d spent close to a million dollars at a high-end clothing and jewelry store in Westport. There was a $12,000 necklace purchased the month before the trial.

A lawyer asked her about it. What did it look like?

“I think it has some sort of stone,” Lorrie said.

That sentence became a meme before memes were a thing. Sports forums replayed it. Radio shows replayed it. Because on one hand, yes, buying a $12,000 necklace you can’t describe is objectively funny. On the other hand — this was a woman who’d spent twenty-six years invisible beside one of the most recognized voices in American broadcasting. If she bought some expensive things, it feels almost like the least complicated part of the story.

The judge didn’t seem to hold it against her too much. He ordered Jim to pay $72,000 a month in alimony — lifetime, until she died or remarried — plus $1,000 a week in child support. Two Connecticut homes. A $70,000 country club membership. Caroline’s college tuition until she turned twenty-three.

Total: roughly $916,000 a year.

The Girlfriend in the Room

Jim Nantz, while still legally married to Lorrie, had started seeing a twenty-nine-year-old woman. He’d met her while promoting a book about his father. He admitted it on the stand. Said the marriage had “died” years before.

The judge handled this with something approaching judicial sangfroid: he noted that Jim’s relationship with the new woman was “a remote event” that “in no way contributed to the breakdown of the marriage.”

Translation: the marriage was already a shell long before anyone else showed up.

That new woman, by the way, was Courtney Richards. She worked as a VP at IMG, the talent agency that represented Nantz. By 2010 they were engaged — reportedly while on vacation in Maine with George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush, because of course they were. They married in 2012 at Pebble Beach. I had two kids. Moved to Nashville in 2021.

Courtney Richards accompanies Jim to events. She’s photographed at CBS upfronts. She is, in other words, the thing Jim Nantz apparently always wanted: a partner in the spotlight, beside him in the frame.

Whether that’s a commentary on what Lorrie refused to be, or on what Lorrie was right to refuse, depends entirely on who you are and what your marriage looks like at 3 AM.

Caroline, and the Part That Actually Matters

Lost in all the alimony headlines is this: Lorrie and Jim have a daughter. Caroline Nantz, born in 1994, who was fifteen when her parents’ marriage became a Connecticut courtroom soap opera.

She graduated from USC. She went into television production — worked as a production intern on Late Night with Seth Meyers, bounced around NBC Universal, Access Hollywood. She is, by all accounts, close with both parents.

That doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because, underneath all the necklaces and oil portraits and $72,000 monthly payments, two people managed to stay decent to each other where their kid was concerned.

Lorrie raised her. Jim paid for her education. Caroline made her own career. Credit where it’s due, all around.

The Loudest Silence in Connecticut

Since November 2009, Lorrie Nantz has said approximately nothing. Publicly. Her attorney in the divorce, Cynthia George of Greenwich, said only that her client was “pleased with the judge’s ruling.” And that was it. That was the last public statement.

No book deal. No interview with People. No revenge on Instagram. No podcast appearance titled “From High School Sweethearts to $916K/Year: My Truth.” Nothing.

In an era when every ex-spouse of anyone remotely famous immediately launches a newsletter and a self-help brand, Lorrie Nantz went home and stayed there.

Reportedly she’s still in Connecticut. Reportedly she’s involved in charity and community work. That’s all. That’s the whole record.

I spent a lot of time digging and the silence is genuinely complete. And look — you could read that as defeat. A woman diminished, disappeared. Or you could read it as the only move that makes sense when the alternative is becoming a footnote in someone else’s fame forever.

She already lived that story for twenty-six years. She didn’t repeat it.

The Woman Before the Name

Here’s the thing nobody writes, because it doesn’t fit the easy narrative: Lorrie Carlsen existed before Jim Nantz. She was a person at Marlboro High School with her own life, her own inclinations, her own sense of what a home should look like and what should and shouldn’t hang on the walls.

She married a man who was going to become enormously famous in a medium that demands constant performance. She was not that person. She was never going to be that person. The judge in the divorce literally wrote in his ruling that couples sometimes simply stop sharing interest in each other’s worlds. That’s not cruelty. That’s just — time.

Jim Nantz got his Courtney, who shows up to events and smiles in the Getty Images catalog. He got his second family and his Pebble Beach home and his wine company and presumably a wall where the oil portrait could finally go.

Lorrie got $72,000 a month, a house in Westport, and her privacy back.

I’m not sure who won. I’m not sure that’s even the right question.

Final Words

Ann-Lorraine Carlsen Nantz is a woman who spent the most visible years of her life being invisible, and then became briefly, painfully visible during the worst year of it, and then went invisible again. By choice. Consistently and completely.

She never wanted to be written about. She never gave quotes. She never rebranded herself. In an age of mandatory self-narration, she just — didn’t.

There’s a version of this story where that’s tragic. A woman swallowed by a famous man’s shadow, no identity of her own, spending money on jewelry she couldn’t describe because what else was there. And that version isn’t entirely wrong.

But there’s another version. A woman who made her choices, raised her daughter well, took what the court gave her, and walked into a quiet life without looking back. Who decided that having her name on the internet was never worth it. Who is probably, right now, in Connecticut, doing something that has nothing to do with sports broadcasting and nothing to do with this article.

She might be the sanest person in this whole story.

FAQs

1. Who is Ann-Lorraine Carlsen Nantz?

She’s the first wife of CBS sportscaster Jim Nantz. They were high school sweethearts who married in 1983 and divorced in 2009 after 26 years together. She has almost entirely avoided public life, both before and after the divorce.

2. How did Ann-Lorraine and Jim Nantz meet?

They met as teenagers at Marlboro High School in New Jersey, long before Jim became one of the most recognizable voices in American sports broadcasting.

3. Why did Jim and Lorrie Nantz divorce?

The judge ruled that neither party was solely at fault. Jim testified that Lorrie stopped supporting his career and rarely accompanied him to work events. The marriage had reportedly deteriorated for years before the formal split. The court called it irreconcilable differences.

4. What did Ann-Lorraine receive in the divorce settlement?

She was awarded $72,000 per month in lifetime alimony (until death or remarriage), $1,000 weekly in child support, two Connecticut properties, a $70,000 country club membership, and Jim was required to keep her as a beneficiary on his $3 million life insurance policy. Total annual value: approximately $916,000.

5. What was the oil portrait incident?

Jim received an oil painting of himself as part of a Man of the Year award from the New York Athletic Club. Lorrie reportedly wouldn’t allow it to be hung in their home, so it went into storage. This became a surprisingly viral side-story from the divorce proceedings.

6. What was the necklace controversy?

During the trial, it came out that Lorrie had purchased a $12,000 necklace the month before. When asked to describe it, she reportedly said “I think it has some sort of stone.” It became a widely-quoted moment and fodder for sports radio.

7. Did Jim Nantz have a girlfriend during the marriage?

Yes. He admitted on the stand to dating a 29-year-old woman before the divorce was finalized — the same woman who would become his second wife, Courtney Richards. The judge ruled this was unrelated to the breakdown of the marriage.

8. Who is Caroline Nantz?

Caroline is the only child of Jim and Lorrie Nantz, born April 29, 1994. She graduated from USC and pursued a career in television production, working at Late Night with Seth Meyers and NBCUniversal’s Access Hollywood. She appears to maintain a good relationship with both parents.

9. Did Ann-Lorraine ever speak publicly about the divorce?

Essentially no. Her attorney made one brief statement saying Lorrie was “pleased with the judge’s ruling.” That’s the full public record from her side.

10. What has Ann-Lorraine done since the divorce?

She reportedly lives in Connecticut and is believed to be involved in philanthropic and community service work. No media appearances, no interviews, no public-facing projects of any kind.

11. Did Jim Nantz’s second marriage also end?

Yes. Wikipedia’s records show Jim Nantz and Courtney Richards divorced in 2023, about eleven years after their 2012 marriage. Jim apparently wasn’t quite done collecting ex-wives.

12. Is Ann-Lorraine Carlsen Nantz rich?

She received lifetime alimony of $72,000 per month until she remarries or passes away. At that rate, in the fifteen-plus years since the 2009 divorce, the numbers are significant. Whether she’s “rich” is beside the point. She’s comfortable, privately, on her own terms. Which honestly sounds like the goal.

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