Some stories never grow old — even if they’re difficult stories in nature — particularly if the story involves Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his stepmother, Teresa Earnhardt, which Dale Jr. described in depth to fellow racer Danica Patrick on her “Pretty Intense Podcast” from 2021.
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From an early age, when his mother sent six-year-old Dale and his sister Kelley to live with their father, Dale Earnhardt, and his third wife, Teresa, there was instant animosity, particularly between stepmother and stepson.
First, let’s give a bit of backstory before we get into Junior vs. Teresa, a relationship that was oftentimes acrimonious until Junior was in his early 30s.
Here’s the first part of the story, as Junior related:
“My parents divorced in (1978),” Junior told Patrick. “I lived with my Mom, never saw Dad, only have one or two memories of Dad before, probably I was six or so.”
“I don’t really know how much he was around or how often we were sent to be with him. If he got visitations, I don’t know how, when he got ‘em, or how often he got ‘em, or how often he took his opportunity to do that. I don’t have a lot of memory of that.”
Then tragedy struck.
“I was living with mom in a real small house in Kannapolis (North Carolina), and the house is on fire, big time on fire,” Junior recalled.
“Mom’s boyfriend comes into the bedroom and says, ‘Hey, get your (pajamas) on, we’ve gotta get out of here.’ I’m just kind of waking up and don’t know what’s going on. I walk out of my bedroom and look to the right, and the whole kitchen is just a big wall of fire. Craziest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“A day or two later, I’m standing in Dad’s garage at Lake Norman in Mooresville (N.C.), and all our stuff is in the garage, and we’re going to live with Dad. Mom was broke and had to move back to Norfolk, VA, to be closer to family there.”
“That was the decision she made. She couldn’t afford it, it was just going to be too hard on her to maintain me and Kelley, and she had no job or nothing at that time, so we went to live with Dad.”
Not having had much of a relationship with his father up to that point, Dale Jr. and his sister were thrust into a testy situation.
“I didn’t know Dad or (stepmother) Teresa, she was there and part of Dad’s life at that point,” Junior said. “That was a hard thing.”
Dale Jr. never hit it off with his stepmother
And while Junior would come to know and love his father, the NASCAR hero, that time of getting to know his father would also be the beginning of Junior’s contentious relationship with his stepmother.
“When I was a kid, man, me and Teresa, we’d butt heads hard,” Junior told Patrick. “We were sprung into her life, and she was with Dad and thinking she had this vision of her future, and bam, here come two kids from his previous marriage, and they’re just gonna plop into this household and she’s gotta adjust her expectations of her future with Dad.”
“I understand her frustration with that, but it was just weird.”
Indeed, it was weird for the better part of the next 25 years, before Junior finally broke away from Teresa in his early 30s, ending his time of racing with Dale Earnhardt Inc., the racing organization his father — who was killed in a last-lap crash of the 2001 Daytona 500 — founded until Junior went to race with Hendrick Motorsports following the 2007 season.
It was also at that time that his relationship with Teresa would implode and eventually lead to her folding the racing organization her late husband was so proud of having started and grown, eventually selling Junior’s iconic No. 8 back to him when the last vestiges of DEI ended last year, as Junior turned 50 and Teresa turned 66.
Junior and Teresa may have shared the same surname — one obtaining it via birth and the other via marriage — but it was a relationship (or more precisely, a non-relationship) that truly was indeed, as Junior put it, “weird.”
