For Stephen and Ayesha Curry, date nights have always been a part of their story. From their very first official date back in 2008—when Ayesha picked him up in her ‘98 Astro van for a trip to Madame Tussauds—to their more recent lavish getaways, they’ve always made time for each other. But when you’re one of the most famous couples on the planet, a simple date night is rarely simple. It often comes with the one thing Steph Curry admits he hates: a disruption.

Being a global superstar means that even a casual outing can turn into a “logistical nightmare,” as he recently put it. But sometimes, those interruptions can turn into something truly special. That’s exactly what happened during a recent golf date, where the couple was cruising in a cart and spotted a young fan wearing a Curry jersey with his mom. Without hesitation, Steph stopped the cart and made the kid’s day, signing his jersey and even a card for his cousins.

It was a heartwarming moment, but it also highlights the constant tension Curry navigates between his public and private life. In a recent, brutally honest interview on 360 With Speedy, he opened up about the struggles of being world-famous. “I do hate that part of it,” he admitted, explaining that a simple dinner can require “seven phone calls just to make sure I can get where I need to go.” The constant attention has made him a self-described “recluse” on the road. “I’m not out like in the streets cuz it’s kind of hard to move around at times unless you plan ahead,” he said.

That level of fame is something few people can comprehend. His former teammate Shaun Livingston once put it plainly: “He’s an A-list celebrity. A-plus. Another tier. Think of the hottest movie star. It’s probably even more than that.” Curry himself has been compared to Michael Jackson, a level of stardom that is both a blessing and a burden. He recalled one of his first tastes of that intense fame back in 2013, after his first playoff run.

“One of the worst experiences of my life,” Curry said of a trip to the airport with Ayesha and their infant daughter, Riley. “Getting bothered left and right from the time we showed up at the airport to the time we got to the house in Charlotte. That was probably when it was like, OK, this is crazy. And, yeah, it’s got even crazier from there.”

That constant attention is especially difficult when he’s with his family. “The times that it gets difficult is just when you’re with your family and you’re trying to give the kids an experience that they will remember, and a healthy childhood,” he once said. It’s a lesson he and Ayesha learned the hard way after their daughter Riley became a viral sensation for crashing his press conferences as a toddler.

The experience led them to be fiercely protective of their children’s privacy, a value Steph’s own mother, Sonya, instilled in him by keeping newspapers out of the house. And now it turns out Curry’s fame is attached to a very interesting reason.

“He is a god there”: How Stephen Curry rewired the Bay Area

So why do fans go so crazy for him? To understand the magnitude of Stephen Curry’s fame, you have to understand what the Warriors were before he arrived. As longtime NBA reporter Marc J. Spears recently explained on the OG’s Podcast, “The Warriors were such a downtrodden franchise… they just never won.” At the time, he said, fans were more attached to exciting scorers like Monta Ellis than they were to winning.

But then, Stephen Curry got cooking. He didn’t just change the team; he rewired the entire Bay Area. The “Steph Effect” became a real, tangible thing. Spears told the story of an Oakland restaurant that was so anti-TV, they refused to show games. But on Warriors nights, the place was a ghost town. So what did they do? “They put a TV in there,” Spears said, because no one wanted to miss Curry dropping 40 from the logo.

And it wasn’t just the die-hard fans. “He got old ladies loving basketball that didn’t even watch basketball wearing 30 jerseys,” Spears added. This wasn’t just fandom; it was a cultural conversion. The love for him in Oakland, Spears explained, runs so deep that if anything ever happened to him in the city, “Dudes from Oakland would come in droves… to save him.”

But why? Because he’s always been one of them, staying grounded and making everyone feel like he’s a part of their community. As Spears put it, “He is a god there.” It’s this incredible, almost mythical status that creates the very disruptions he struggles with, turning a simple golf date into a viral, wholesome moment.