Couch: Danton and Debbie Cole's long road between Waverly and MSU

EAST LANSING – Of the many things that attracted Debbie Fox to Danton Cole all those years ago, hockey wasn’t one of them.

Danton liked that. Still does.

“I think she understands the business of hockey,” Michigan State’s new hockey coach said of his wife. “But, I don’t want this to come out the wrong way, I don’t think hockey is that important to her.

“You see a lot of that with guys who are athletes, wives of athletes — if you meet while you’re playing and that’s the attraction or focus, when you’re done playing, sometimes it doesn’t work out. You see that quite a bit. Our bond and our relationship was really built on everything but sports. I enjoy that aspect and I enjoy that that’s definitely not the most important thing in our lives.”

Thirty-three years after Danton struck up a conversation with Debbie at a Waverly High School graduation party, this non-hockey, hockey couple is back home — or will be once Debbie again packs up their lives. Back in the community where Debbie was born and raised, and where Danton moved at age 9.

RELATED:

• Couch: Danton Cole must rescue MSU hockey from the abyss
• Danton Cole's goal - revive MSU's hockey excellence

By Debbie’s count, this is their 11th move since Danton left MSU to begin his NHL career with the Winnipeg Jets during the 1989-90 season. They married in 1991 and have three daughters — Ashton, 24, Maddie, 22, and Payton, 17, who graduates high school this spring.

This is the first move that won’t disrupt the entire family.

“Whenever we would call a family meeting, the girls would get nervous,” Danton said. “We had a couple where it didn’t go as well.”

Their road as a couple looks something like this: Lansing; Winnipeg, Manitoba; Tampa; Salt Lake City; Indianapolis; Krefeld, Germany; Grand Rapids; Bowling Green, Ohio; Huntsville, Alabama; Ann Arbor; back to Lansing.

Some were temporary stops. Some as a player, then as a coach. Some with kids.

Each time, Danton went ahead, began their new life, had immediate friends and purpose. Each time, Debbie wrapped up their lives in their old town.

For a while, they owned a house in Holt as a home base — convenient, for example, when Danton was traded from the Tampa Bay Lightning to the New Jersey Devils in March of 1995, the day before Debbie gave birth to their second child, Maddie. Danton left his pregnant wife and 19-month-old daughter, Ashton, in Florida after the trade. Debbie was supposed to pick her mother up at the airport the next day. Instead, after her water broke, she got a ride from one of the other Lightning players’ wives to the hospital.

“I had one phone number to reach him (in New Jersey),” Debbie said. “I got a hold of somebody. I said, ‘I’m going to the hospital to have the baby.’ They flew him back, before she was born. Then he left again the next day.”

Debbie then moved to Holt to be near family as Danton and the Devils went on a Stanley Cup Finals run that lasted until late June.

“It did ease the blow, winning the Stanley Cup,” Danton said. “We kept winning rounds and winning rounds, we got to the finals and I remember her telling me, ‘You better win this. Don’t come home in second place, because that wouldn’t have been worth it.’”

Leaving Grand Rapids and Alabama were the hardest transitions for their children. They lived in Ada, outside Grand Rapids, the longest. When they left Huntsville — where Danton was the head coach at the University of Alabama-Huntsville for three years from 2007-10 — the ages of their girls made the move difficult.

“That was the probably the saddest they’ve been and it was probably the longest they stayed angry with me, the Alabama move back to Michigan,” Danton said.

That move — for a head coaching job with the USA Hockey National Development program — like every move, was done with the MSU coaching job in mind.

Since his first successful head coaching experience, with the UHL’s Muskegon Fury in 2001-02, the idea of one day coaching his alma mater has been the ultimate goal and a regular topic of conversation.

“It’s the real deal. Every job he took was to try to advance so he could get here,” Debbie said.

Danton’s family no longer lives in the area — his parents are in Traverse City, his sister in Washington, D.C. — but Debbie’s mother, seven brothers and three sisters all live within an hour or so of Lansing. Her father, James, passed away two years ago.

She saw a lot of James in Danton — even early on, as they began dating the summer following her graduation from Waverly High School, and during a year apart as Danton spent his senior year of high school playing junior hockey near Toronto.

“He was just confident, funny,” Debbie said. “He had good moral character. He was and still is one of those people where there’s black and white and there’s really no gray. If it’s the right thing to do, that’s what you do. If not, you don’t.

“That’s very similar to my father. I hate to say I married my father, but in some ways …”

Debbie doesn’t remember when she first met Danton. Danton recalls a chemistry class at Waverly High School during his sophomore year, her junior year, but thinks they probably met earlier through mutual friends.

He can tell you with greater detail about his days playing baseball with John Smoltz beginning in the fourth grade. They were Waverly High School’s top two pitchers before Danton left Waverly to play junior hockey, not long after asking Debbie out.

“That’s a tough time of life to do a long-distance relationship, especially back then,” Danton said. “We didn’t have cell phones and FaceTime. It took a little bit of effort. But we both decided it was what we wanted to do and it worked out pretty well. When I came back and was at Michigan State the following year, it was a heckuva lot easier.”

“He had his head on straight,” Debbie said. “Never too big on ego. Did what he loved to do and was grateful for the chance to do to it.”

If that was hockey, so be it.

“I had never seen a hockey game until we started dating,” Debbie said.

“I know she did think that hockey uniforms were kind of silly looking, with the shorts,” Danton said. “And if you think about it, they kind of are.”

Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.