Lori Matsuoka Is a Philanthropy Editor – Facts about Bill Walton’s Wife

Lori Matsuokais, the second wife of ESPN’s Bill Walton, found a fulfilling career later in life. The couple has been together since the 90s and shares a love for music and dogs.

In her three decades of residing in San Diego, Bill Walton’s wife, Lori Matsuoka, has served on over a dozen charity boards and chaired many fundraisers. She works at a philanthropic magazine.

The couple lives in the same home where the ESPN college basketball analyst raised his four tall sons with his first wife of 19 years.

University of California, Los Angeles grad Matsuoka is of Japanese ancestry. “She’s an American,” Walton said in a 2001 New York Times profile. ”That’s all you need to know.” He declined to give her age, who the reporter guessed was in her mid-thirties. The sports presenter was then in his late forties.

Matsuoka landed her dream gig as philanthropy editor at Giving Back Magazine after 32 years in jobs she “basically” took “because of the money.” The philanthropist said on social media in November 2020:

“I have had a lot of different careers, and most of them did nothing to fill my soul.”

At UCLA, she took part in the undergraduate service organization, where she learned that she “could make an impact” by giving her time. After college, she had an unfulfilling corporate job where she “made good money.”

Walton and Matsuoka looked to have grown their family.

In 2001 she got high marks in her massage-therapy class, and she used to raise service dogs for many years. With her husband, she takes in retired service dogs.

Matsuoka met the former basketball star at one of his parties in 1990. At the start of their courtship, Walton took the animal lover to seven consecutive Bob Dylan concerts at the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles. He said:

“When she was still there at the end of that run of Dylan concerts, I knew I had a chance.”

Like her husband, Matsuoka is a Deadhead, the name given to die-hard fans of the rock band The Grateful Dead. Their home is decorated with posters and paraphernalia of the group.

The couple has a pair of Labradors, Potter, and Auggie, and consider Gabe, the service dog of the Paralympian who stays with them, as their own. Though the details are scant, Walton and Matsuoka looked to have grown their family. Walton said in 2021:

“I am blissfully married to Lori, L-O-R-I, not for long enough. We have six children and 14 grandchildren, and I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”

“What a great day, early swim at Mission Valley Y, then learning all about Princeton basketball, then kissing my wife Lori,” Walton wrote in December 2017 on the social network Elon Musk has since rebranded to X.

“Then riding my bike, then the weight room, then the jacuzzi,” he continued, “I love San Diego; I’m the luckiest guy in the world; here we go!!! I need a lot more of that!!!”