Rob Gronkowski grew up in a custom-built house with wide halls and rooms that fit multiple king beds.- His father, Gordy Gronkowski, told Esquire in 2014 that his five sons slept wherever they "crashed."
- Gronkowski and three of his brothers played in the NFL; his other brother played minor-league baseball.
Few houses in the world look like Rob Gronkowski's childhood home.
As Esquire's Chris Jones reported in 2014 in a profile of Gronkowski's father, Gordy, the home was built for five future athletes of considerable size.
According to Jones, Gordy built the house in 2002 with double-width hallways, extra-tall doors, and "huge" rooms. Gordy told Jones that "the movers loved it" because they could easily move the furniture through the open spaces.
Each of the Gronkowski children had a king-size bed, and one room alone held three beds. Gordy said, however, that the bedrooms weren't designated - the Gronkowski children simply slept where they "crashed.""They slept in any of 'em," Gordy told Jones. "Wherever they crashed that night, they crashed."
Jones tweeted on Sunday that it was as if Gordy had raised "giant cats."
—Chris Jones (@EnswellJones) February 8, 2021
The backyard had a full baseball field, a tennis and basketball court, a pool, and a hot tub. The basement had a professional-grade gym with about $80,000 worth of equipment - fitting, as Gordy ran and operated a chain of gyms.
As Jones wrote, the Gronkowski family tree is built solely of "trunks." Gordy was described as 6-foot-3 and 235 pounds. Rob is listed as 6-foot-6 and 265 pounds. In 2014, each of the Gronkowski children weighed 230 to 270 pounds.
Rob and his brothers Dan, Chris, and Glenn went on to play in the
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Gronkowski's move to Tampa with Tom Brady paid off for his mother, Diane, who moved to Fort Meyers, Florida, years ago. She told The Tampa Bay Times ahead of the Super Bowl that she'd seen more of Rob in the past year than she had during all his years in New England.
Diane was asked about raising five huge sons. She said that she had two full-size refrigerators and freezers and that she planned out meals at least a day in advance. She added that she used to go through two gallons of milk a day.
"It was a lot of work raising them," she said. "But I wasn't raising them in any specific way. They love sports. They all did hockey, football, basketball, baseball. They went snow skiing. They went waterskiing, they played tennis, they swam. They played golf. So pretty much whatever anybody wanted to do, it's like, 'Okay, we'll go do it.'"
She added: "The five of them were always all together. They were a group. They did everything together."