THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE, Sept. 28, 2014

He's still wildly popular in St. Louis, where Jim Hanifan was once offensive line coach and then head coach of the St. Louis Cardinals, and later offensive line coach for the Super Bowl-winning St. Louis Rams.

When he goes out in public, everybody wants to talk to him, and he obliges.

But on this particular afternoon - on his 81st birthday, no less - Hanifan spent nearly an hour at a corner table in a crowded restaurant, chewing the fat with a teenager he hardly knew, a teen who lives a couple thousand miles away.

And Alex Callahan, a junior at Coeur d'Alene High - as well as his father, Mike - will be forever grateful.

"It was a lot of fun; he told me a lot of things that I'll remember forever," Alex said. "It was about sports, but also a little bit about life."

"That was a real highlight," Mike added. "We're in a place that's packed, and coach Hanifan is just one of those guys who would take that kind of time to sit down with a high school kid that's in sports, and tell him his thoughts on life. That's a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Everything else was wonderful and great but for me, that was the real highlight of the trip."

FATHER AND son Callahan are Rams' fans - a rarity in these parts - and were part of a group that included Dale Nosworthy and two of his sons, Kelly and Chris, who traveled to St. Louis last weekend for the Dallas Cowboys-St. Louis Rams game.

For Dale, it was a chance to help Hanifan - who recruited him to the University of Utah - celebrate his 81st birthday, as well as catch up with former Ute teammate Rod Marinelli, now the defensive coordinator for the Cowboys. The three of them have rarely been in the same place since those Utah days in the late 1960s.

For the Callahans, it was a chance to get an up-close look - thanks mostly to Hanifan - at their favorite team, from watching the team walkthrough last Saturday at Rams Park, the team's training complex, to being in the team locker room, to being down on the field the next day at the Edward Jones Dome prior to the game.

MIKE CALLAHAN has been a Rams' fan since the 1970s, growing up in Kellogg, when the Rams were still in Los Angeles and one of the top teams in the NFL, and long before the Seahawks were even an idea. Alex, who plays basketball and golf at Coeur d'Alene, became a Rams growing up, mostly because of his dad.

The Callahans have met Hanifan a couple times before, when he came to Coeur d'Alene to play in a benefit golf tournament put on by Dale Nosworthy.

At the fundraiser auction, Mike Callahan bought a Sam Bradford jersey and a Chris Long jersey one year, and a Tavon Austin jersey at the auction this past summer.

According to Mike, when Austin's jersey came up for bid this year, "Dale looks at me and says, 'Put Callahan down for $400 for a jersey,'" Mike recalled. "That's a heck of an auction."

The way Dale tells it, when the jersey came up for bid, his plan was for Mike to "up it (the bid) a little bit, and we'll get you on the field in St. Louis."

Hanifan, who now opines about the NFL and the Rams in particular on local radio in St. Louis, gave the Callahans a tour of the Rams, facilities, and led the group onto the field on game day at the dome.

"The guy is truly a legend in that town," said Callahan, who worked for Hecla Mining for nearly two decades, and now runs a mining company based in Vancouver, British Columbia. "When we walked into the stadium he just said, 'Stick with me.' We get to the front gate, and they don't even check our tickets. It's a treatment that not everybody gets to experience."

DALE NOSWORTHY thought last weekend might have been the first time since the 1999 season when he, Hanifan and Marinelli had been together. Any two of them have hooked up since then, but the three of them had never been together.

If so, that last meeting would have been for the NFC title game, when Marinelli was defensive line coach at Tampa Bay and Hanifan was offensive line coach at St. Louis. The Rams won that one 11-6, and went on to win the Super Bowl two weeks later.

"It was pretty special," Hanifan said of their reunion last weekend. "You don't know how many times (that will happen again)."

Or how many times you can wind up on the sidelines at the NFL game, reaping the benefits of hanging out with a legendary former coach.

"It was truly the royal treatment all the way around," Mike Callahan said.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter@CdAPressSports.