Janet Mills Husband: Remembering Stanley Kuklinski’s Life and Love
If you’ve ever searched “Janet Mills husband,” you’re really asking about Stanley “Stan” Kuklinski – the real estate developer, tennis coach and father of five who married Maine’s future governor in the mid-1980s and stayed by her side until his death in 2014. He never held elected office, but his quiet presence shaped a lot of the woman Mainers know today as Governor Janet Mills.
Janet Mills Before And Beyond The Blaine House
Janet Trafton Mills didn’t appear out of nowhere when she was sworn in as the 75th governor of Maine. She was born in Farmington in 1947, into a family that lived and breathed law and public service. Her father, Sumner Peter Mills Jr., served as a U.S. attorney for Maine; her siblings went on to careers in public health, law and politics. Public life was something she saw up close from the beginning.
After law school, Mills became Maine’s first female criminal prosecutor and, not long after, the first woman district attorney in all of New England. She later served multiple terms as Maine’s attorney general and did a stint in the state legislature. Eventually, in 2018, she broke another barrier as the first woman elected governor of Maine, winning re-election in 2022. In 2025 she took another leap and announced a run for the U.S. Senate.
Through all of that, from courtroom work to campaigns, there was a man mostly just out of the camera frame, holding down his own life and helping anchor hers.
Who Was Stanley “Stan” Kuklinski?
When Janet Mills met Stan Kuklinski, he wasn’t a political insider or a household name. He was a real estate developer and deeply rooted local figure in western Maine. He lived in Farmington, worked on properties in the region, and poured his free time into community roles.
Stan was also a widower raising five daughters on his own. By the time he and Janet started seeing each other seriously, he had been a solo parent for years, juggling business, grief and the daily realities of getting five girls through childhood and adolescence.
People who knew him in Farmington talk about him first as a dad and a coach, not as a big personality. He served as chair of the Maine Athletics Commission, sat on the Maine Harness Racing Commission and the state Boxing Commission, and spent years coaching the boys’ tennis team at Mt. Blue High School, helping to build the program from the ground up. It’s an unflashy kind of résumé, but very much in keeping with Maine’s culture: steady committee work, a lot of time on the courts, and being the adult who shows up for kids after school.
A Mid-Life Marriage And A Big Ready-Made Family
Janet Mills and Stan Kuklinski married in 1985. She was a rising attorney; he was a businessman with five daughters between roughly four and sixteen. Overnight, she didn’t just become someone’s wife—she became stepmother to a houseful of girls.
Mills has spoken about that period as one that pulled her back to Farmington in a serious way. She continued to build her legal and political career, but she also stepped fully into family life: school runs, homework, sports, teenage drama, trips back and forth to activities. In interviews she’s described herself as being a “full-time mom” while also working full-time, a balancing act that many women in Maine immediately recognize.
The partnership between Stan and Janet wasn’t glamorous in the political sense; it was practical. He understood the daily reality of parenting because he’d been doing it alone. She brought energy, education and a sense of mission, but also a willingness to get her hands dirty in the everyday work of raising a family. Over the years, that family grew outward as the girls became adults and had children of their own. These days, Mills talks with obvious pride about being grandmother to several grandchildren, a detail that comes up as naturally as her list of public offices.
A Supportive Partner Just Offstage
Because Stan died before Janet Mills was elected governor, he never officially carried the title of Maine’s First Gentleman. But in a very real way, he played that role during her years as district attorney, legislator and attorney general.
While she handled some of the state’s toughest legal and political fights, he kept his footing in the community—running his business, showing up at commission meetings, coaching tennis, and occasionally appearing at events by her side. Local coverage mentioned him as her husband but rarely lingered on him. That’s exactly how he seemed to like it: visible enough to be supportive, but not interested in the spotlight.
People who knew them describe their relationship as grounded and private. There were no big public displays, no splashy profiles about “power couple” glamour. Their shared focus, by most accounts, was on the girls they were raising, the grandson who arrived later, and the town they kept coming back to, even as Janet’s work pulled her repeatedly to Augusta and beyond.
Illness, Loss, And Carrying On
In his seventies, Stan’s health began to decline. He suffered a stroke in 2013 and never fully recovered. On September 24, 2014, he died from complications of that stroke at the age of 74.
Obituaries and tributes published at the time painted a portrait of a man who had quietly woven himself into the fabric of Farmington and the wider state: a tennis coach who helped shape a generation of players, a longtime volunteer on Maine’s athletic and racing commissions, and a father and grandfather who kept close ties with his daughters and their children.
For Janet Mills, losing him meant losing a partner of nearly 30 years just as her own career was again demanding more of her. She was serving as Maine’s attorney general when he died, and she stayed in that role after his death, navigating both personal grief and public responsibility. A few years later, she would launch the campaign that would put her in the Blaine House.
Janet Mills As A Widow And Grandmother
Since Stan’s passing, Mills has not remarried. Official biographies, recent profiles and news reports refer to her as a widow, and none mention a new husband or long-term partner.
Her public comments about her personal life now revolve mostly around her stepdaughters and grandchildren. She still calls Farmington home, even though her duties keep her in Augusta and on the road; it’s where she returns to see family, walk familiar streets and reconnect with the world outside of politics.
On the campaign trail and in speeches, she often folds family stories into policy arguments—talking about health care or education by talking about what it means to be a grandmother in a rural state, or about watching her stepdaughters build lives of their own in Maine. In that way, Stan’s influence continues, even if his name isn’t always said out loud.
Featured Image Source: nbcnews.com
