Kim Mulkey does not speak to her father, Les, or her younger sister, Tammy. They do not have a relationship.
A Washington Post profile detailed why things have deteriorated between the Mulkey family.
It started when Les cheated on Kim and Tammy’s mom throughout their childhood. He later left her to marry a younger woman, which was not well received by his oldest daughter.
Kim Mulkey got married in 1987. She advised her father that he could attend with his new wife, but sat them in the back away from the family. Les agreed.
However, he and Kim could not work through their differences and the latter walked herself down the aisle. They have not spoken since. That was 37 years ago.
Despite their lack of relationship, Les still supports Kim in secret. He occasionally travels to Baton Rouge and slips into the back of the Pete Maravich Assembly Center at LSU to watch her coach without her knowing that he is there.
She may not have known that her father does this until she read the article, if she read the article.
Les, 86, is holding out hope that Kim may one day change her tune. He longs to know his daughter, even though he recognizes his flaws and knows that there were times in which he could have been a better father and/or a better person.
It paints a truly sad picture, regardless of how things played out between them.
Les has no such delusions. Isn’t it odd, he says, to love a child so much that you leave them be? It’s how Kim wants it, he says, but he prays every night that, tomorrow, she will want something new. He is 86 now and lives alone, in a dilapidated trailer way out past the pines. It’s where he retreats after his drives to Baton Rouge. He has dozens of pictures, newspaper cutouts, mementos from Kim’s basketball career […]
It’s all he has left of her, and with many of Les’s friends dying recently, he thinks about what’s next. He was cocky, he says. Stubborn. A little too proud, he says, so when his time comes, Les figures it’ll be when he’s alone, surrounded by achievements but not people, wasting away like the things he once built.
— Kent Babb of the Washington Post
Tammy also does not speak with Kim. They have not talked to each other for five or six years after a disagreement caused separation between them.
Tammy will not expand further on what happened but she also hopes that her relationship with Kim will get better with time. Unlike her father, she does believe that they will one day reconnect.