Cole Kmet isn’t quite sure who his sister, Frankie, is rooting for this weekend. The Chicago Bears tight end didn’t ask.
Ahead of the much-anticipated wild-card playoff game between the Bears and Green Bay Packers on Saturday night at Soldier Field, Frankie Kmet may be one of the few fans whose rooting interest is torn between both sides of the historic rivalry.
Frankie is dating Barrington native Lukas Van Ness, a Packers defensive end. The Kmets grew up in nearby Lake Barrington. Frankie and Van Ness began dating in college at Iowa.
Cole Kmet was already on the Bears when the Packers drafted Van Ness in the first round (No. 13) in 2023. Cole couldn’t help but laugh Tuesday when asked which team his sister is rooting for.
“I don’t talk to her Packers week,” he joked. “So I’ll find out after the game.”
Packers defensive end Lukas van Ness in the second half Dec. 14, 2025, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
The Kmet siblings are the children of former Hersey and Purdue defensive lineman Frank Kmet, who had a brief NFL career, including a season on the Bears practice squad in 1993. Their uncle Jeff Zgonina played defensive tackle in the league for 17 years.
The Kmets are an athletic family. Cole’s younger brother Casey played baseball at Notre Dame, and the youngest sibling, Cooper, is a quarterback on the Illinois State team that just reached the FCS national championship game.
Cole, the eldest of the four, played football and baseball at Notre Dame before the Bears made him a second-round draft pick in 2020. As one of the few players on the Bears roster who grew up in the Chicago area, he knows all too well what the Bears-Packers rivalry means in this city.
“To be able to be at home, against Green Bay, it’s going to be a special atmosphere,” he said. “It almost feels like we’ve played these guys five or six times here in the past month. But that will just make the atmosphere and the battle that much more epic.”
Cole was on the losing end of his first nine Bears-Packers games. But the Bears finally snapped the longest streak in the history of the rivalry (11 straight Green Bay wins) in Week 18 last season, and they’ve now won two of the last three after a dramatic overtime win Dec. 20.
While he was joking about not talking to Frankie during Packers week, Cole does tend to keep his interactions with friends and family brief when he’s preparing for a game.
“She did ask for tickets and I just sent her the tickets,” he said. “But I didn’t really respond to anything else besides that.”
Why didn’t she ask Van Ness for tickets? Well, the home team usually gets better seats for family members.
“So I had to help my sister out,” Cole said. “All kidding aside, I usually find that out (who she’s rooting for) after the game. Usually she is just happy to see both of us healthy and all that good sister stuff. But I hope deep down she is rooting for us.”
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/01/06/chicago-bears-cole-kmet-sister-lukas-van-ness/
