Chicago is special for Bears receiver Marquise Goodwin. It’s where a doctor helped his wife after years of loss — and where he’ll try to jumpstart his NFL career.

Marae Goodwin is going to be an athlete. Her parents are sure of it.

She has the DNA, for one thing. Marquise Goodwin is an Olympic long jumper and seven-year NFL wide receiver who drew attention at Chicago Bears minicamp last week with his breakaway speed. Morgan (Snow) Goodwin was a nine-time first-team All-American hurdler and sprinter at Texas.

She has the grooming. At 16 months old, Marae already is toddling around the track and football field while her dad trains.

And then there’s the physical evidence. Sitting up at 4 months. Standing unassisted by 6 months. Walking at 8 months. For the first year of Marae’s life, Marquise and Morgan were together to witness all of those early milestones.

“I got to see her every single day, every hour,” Marquise said.

That’s not always the case for professional athletes. Meetings, practices and travel to games mean a lot of time away from their families during the season.

But Marae was born Feb. 19, 2020, just weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in the United States. Two months later, the San Francisco 49ers traded Marquise to the Philadelphia Eagles in a draft-weekend trade. Three months after that, Marquise announced he would be opting out of the season with the Eagles.

More than 60 players opted out of the 2020 NFL season, some with conditions that put them at high risk if they contracted COVID-19 others with concerns about the health of their families. Marquise was in the latter category.

He and Morgan already had suffered too much loss. Marae is their rainbow baby, born after Morgan and Marquise lost three sons who were born prematurely. Marquise would not chance bringing more suffering into their home.

“I didn’t want to run the risk of having to travel too much and end up catching the virus and then coming home and bringing it to our newborn and then Morgan,” Marquise said. “But especially the baby, especially after we’ve already lost three kids. I just had to make a decision that was bigger than just myself.

“I couldn’t be selfish and go out there and play the game that I love to play and played since I was 9 years old. I had to make the decision for my family, and I feel like as a man, those vows that I spoke on Feb. 12, 2016, one day I knew I would have to honor those words.”

Now, after more than a year of huddling together in their Dallas home, Marquise is back on an NFL field, trying to beat out the competition for a spot in the Bears wide receivers room. Doing it in Chicago — where Morgan had a surgery that made it possible to carry Marae to full term — feels like it’s meant to be.

Their beginning

Father’s Day could bring a complex web of emotions for Marquise, but he will try to make it simple. He will choose to focus on celebrating the daughter he has rather than grieving the sons he lost.

“He’s so much stronger than me when it comes to those days, because I can sometimes get in my feelings and he does a really good job at reminding me, you’ve got to look forward,” Morgan said. “You’ve got to put our energy toward Marae. I know we can’t get our boys back, but they’re watching over us in heaven, and we’ve got to keep striving, keep living and not let it make us have a bad day.”

Their story began at a track meet, naturally.

Marquise was a junior on the Texas track team when a competitor from LSU asked him if he had a sister on the team.

“There’s a girl that looks just like you,” he told Marquise.

Marquise had to find out who she was, and after a teammate connected the Texas freshman with him, he sent this introductory text message: “What’s good? I’m Marquise. Nice to meet you. Who is your dad?”

“I couldn’t believe he asked who my father is,” Morgan said.

Morgan assured Marquise, a Texas native, that her father was in Georgia, and a text relationship began, followed by a friendship, followed by a supportive bond.

Marquise was attracted to Morgan’s looks but also her focus and commitment to school. Morgan was drawn to Marquise’s persistence, consistency and drive.

“And she just fell in love with me,” Marquise said.

“No, he fell in love with me,” Morgan said. “I had the Georgia peach going on.”

They were engaged after two years together and married after four. They don’t like to be apart, and they have chronicled their adventures for three years — from traveling to pranks to parenting — on the YouTube channel GoodwinSzn, which has 87,500 subscribers.

“We do everything together,” Marquise said. “People would get annoyed by us because they’re like, ‘Man, that ain’t real. They’re always together.’”

Kids were a part of the plan from the start. They just didn’t know how difficult that path would be.

Their losses

The video clip from the Nov. 12, 2017, game between the 49ers and New York Giants is heart-wrenching.

After streaking past Giants cornerback Janoris Jenkins to score an 83-yard touchdown, Marquise blew a kiss to the sky, knelt in the end zone and then collapsed with his facemask to the turf in exhaustion and grief while his teammates surrounded him.

Goodwin’s first touchdown of the season sparked the 49ers’ first win. It also came just hours after his first son died.

At a 19-week appointment, doctors told Morgan she had a short cervix and gave her a 50% chance of delivering early. Doctors gave her a stitch in the cervix to help her carry the baby longer, but it had to be removed a couple of days later when she started leaking amniotic fluid. She went home on bed rest the night before the Giants game, and Marquise chose to stay with her rather than at the team hotel. She asked him to come into the bathroom with her because she was scared, and that’s when they realized the amniotic sac was coming out.

At the hospital, doctors told Morgan she was at risk for infection or serious complications if she didn’t deliver early. As they waited for that time to come, they opened an envelope they had been saving for a gender reveal. Marquise burst into tears when he read it was a boy, and they laid in bed together crying.

At 3:52 a.m., Morgan delivered Baby Goodwin, and they held the son they lost in their arms. Marquise, who hadn’t slept or eaten, was expected at the 49ers game just hours later.

Marquise remembers how tired and out of it he was going into the game, but he tried to stay focused so he didn’t get hurt.

“I was like, ‘Man, I’m not playing. I’m going to just stay here with you. They’re going to have to understand it, end of story,’ ” Marquise said. “Morgan was like, ‘I think you should go.’ She convinced me to go. She convinced me that our now son would be watching over us, and if he was alive he would want me to go.”

Morgan knew she wanted to get pregnant again right away, and she had a laparoscopic transabdominal cerclage (TAC) to help support a pregnancy. She became pregnant with twin boys, but things took a turn for the worse again at 19 weeks when one of the amniotic sacs funneled through the TAC. Baby A’s sac ruptured during contractions, and she needed to have surgery to remove the TAC so she could deliver him prematurely to avoid infection.

Marquise had traveled with the 49ers to Tampa, Fla., for a game when Morgan called him from the hospital, and he got right back on a plane to be with her.

During the surgery, Baby B’s sac also ruptured, and they ended up losing both boys.

“I was so upset and so mad and pissed and just so hurt because I did everything I was supposed to do so this wouldn’t happen again, and it happened again — my worst nightmare, the thing that I feared the most,” Morgan said. “The only thing that made it better was my husband being there and us praying. Him just being there for me, he was everything I needed at that moment.”

Marquise and Morgan didn’t let their grief stop them from trying again, and a few months later, they traveled to Chicago for a surgery that offered a new hope.

Their hope

Each year, the transabdominal cerclage program at the University of Chicago Medicine helps between 200-250 women who have cervical insufficiency.

Dr. Arthur Haney brought the program to prominence by helping thousands of women have babies after pregnancy losses. He made a 2-inch incision above the pubic bone and placed strong synthetic bands that look like flat shoelaces around the cervix to support up to 100 pounds of weight. He touted a 99% success rate among his patients.

Haney retired in November, but Dr. Laura Douglass, who has been at U. of C. since 2015, trained with him to take over the program, which now has one other doctor who also performs the procedures. In her work with Haney, Douglass came to understand why it was such a passion of his.

“It is one of the most rewarding things that I do,” she said. “It’s incredible. When you talk to women, there’s such a trauma that’s involved when you lose pregnancies. And most women that I talk to, it’s not just one. It happens multiple times. And it’s devastating. The procedure can really change the course of people’s lives.”

Morgan and Marquise are two of those people.

Morgan found out about Haney through a support group for women with cervical insufficiency and consulted with him after her first pregnancy loss. But she said because she would have issues with her insurance covering the procedure, she opted to have a laparoscopic TAC done locally. After the loss of their twins, she contacted Haney again, and they determined he would help with his open TAC procedure, which Morgan said allowed him to get the right tension on the band.

In March 2019, Morgan and Marquise traveled to Chicago for the first time outside of football travel, and Haney did the surgery that set the stage for Morgan’s pregnancy with Marae.

Whenever Morgan became nervous — and she was stressed out enough at 19 weeks that her doctor prescribed bed rest for a week — she would email Haney, and he would respond quickly with reassurance. After 23 weeks, she felt relief that the pregnancy was more viable.

When Morgan went to the hospital for her caesarean section, Marquise accompanied her — with the duty to announce the sex of the baby. Marquise was in joyful disbelief that it was a girl but also that it was just finally happening.

“People think I’m tough,” Marquise said. “You’re a warrior.”

“Tell them how you were like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I can’t believe they have your intestines out,’ ” Morgan said.

“I saw all of her guts laying out, and they were just shoving them back in,” Marquise said. “Like, ‘What, you ain’t got to place them soft?’ It was crazy. But that was the best moment in my whole life. That’s the only way I can explain it. I can’t wait to do it again.”

They named her Marae because it was unique and they read something that said a woman named Marae would project confidence when she walked into a room.

It fits. She’s smart and feisty. A girl with “personality,” they said in unison.

And after more than a year at home with her mom and dad, she’s getting an introduction to the sports life they temporarily put on hold.

Their future

Among the highlights of the first day of Bears veteran minicamp at Halas Hall last week was Marquise bolting past defensive back Xavier Crawford to catch a deep ball from quarterback Andy Dalton.

Marquise said it was “crazy weird” to be away from Morgan and Marae for a few days, but it was good to be back on the football field. He didn’t watch much football during his year off — not even clips on SportsCenter.

“I couldn’t do it because I knew it would give me that itch, like, ‘Dang, man, I wish I was out there,’” he said. “Or just unappreciative of the moments I had at home. So I really took that year to reflect on sitting out and really indulged in spending time with my family.”

But he still trained.

Staying in shape was a part of his routine as he looks to stay healthy and be a contributing part of a winning team this season. He had 56 catches for 962 yards and two touchdowns in his best season in 2017 for the 49ers. But that dropped to 23 catches for 395 yards and four touchdowns in 11 games in 2018 and 12 catches for 186 yards in nine games in 2019, when he ended the season on injured reserve and didn’t play in the 49ers’ Super Bowl loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.

Marquise still has much to prove to the Bears next month when practices ramp up at training camp, but coach Matt Nagy was impressed with the condition Goodwin was in when he showed up for the offseason program.

Nagy said they were joking about how players with 10 years of experience still have their college 40-yard dash times listed in their scouting data. Goodwin told Nagy, “Coach, I’m faster now than I was when I came out.”

“Anytime you have an Olympic mentality you are different,” Nagy said. “That’s a minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour regime that you are keeping your body in shape. ... For him, that’s never going to change.”

Marquise said when he signed a one-year deal with the Bears in April coaches embraced his desire to go to another Olympic trials in the long jump. He was on the 2012 Olympic team in the event and just missed a spot on the 2016 team.

He qualified for this week’s Olympic trials with a jump of 8.12 meters in the spring and plans to compete in the preliminaries in Eugene, Ore., on Friday.

“My chances are always high because you never know what could happen on that day,” he said.

What happens next — with the Olympics and the Bears — remains to be seen. But Morgan and Marae will be in Eugene next weekend, and they’ll likely be at Soldier Field if Marquise plays in the Bears’ first preseason game in August.

It would be Marae’s first football game, and that truly would be something special.

“Everything started in Chicago with her,” Marquise said. “It’s divine.”