Jenice Armstrong | Raquel's

THE WIFE OF Eagles quarterback

Donovan McNabb

is notoriously media-shy.

Maybe it's because her husband gets slaughtered in the press and on sports-talk radio. Whatever her motivation, Raquel McNabb has managed to hang on to her privacy in this sports-crazy city, even as her significant other's every move is dissected and analyzed to the point of absurdity.

Although fans have been known to knock on her front door, she's remained relatively anonymous, shunning the spotlight. She does, though, make the occasional public appearance at select charity events such as tomorrow's Living Beyond Breast Cancer luncheon at Saks Fifth Avenue on City Avenue.

Media attention is something she's never enjoyed, Raquel said during a phone conversation Friday. "Even when I was in college . . . my media director, I always told her I didn't want to do any press conferences."

That must have been a major headache for Syracuse University, since Raquel, whose nickname is Roxie, was a star on the women's basketball team.

"I don't read the sports pages or listen to the radio in Philly," said Raquel, who married Donovan in 2003. "If they boo him, it's like 'whatever.' You can't yell at 50,000 fans."

Home is an oasis where the couple's daughter, 3-year-old Alexis, who's enrolled in ballet and gymnastic classes, demands his attention - along with their two puppies, American bulldogs.

"Some days, we don't discuss football. We talk about other things," Raquel explained. "He's a pretty strong person. He deals with things himself.

"If he plays bad, I'm not going to tell him he played well," Raquel continued. "It's a game in the grand scheme of things."

She broke her no-press policy last week because of a pet project she's working on - a baby shower for new and expectant mothers scheduled for Oct. 27 at Temple University Medical Center.

Organized with state Sen. Shirley Kitchen, the free event will have information about breast-feeding, pre-natal nutrition and personal finance. Various Eagles wives are donating baby-gift baskets, the McNabb Foundation is donating car seats and coach Andy Reid's wife, Tammy, is providing Eagles

paraphernalia as giveaways. Raquel came up with the idea after a conversation with her sister, a nurse practitioner in Houston, about the needs of uninsured mothers.

"It struck a chord with me," Raquel recalled. "Just going through my own pregnancy, I asked myself, 'What would I have done without insurance?' I found out late in my pregnancy that I had gestational diabetes.

"I grew up in Canada where there's socialized medicine. I grew up knowing people had health insurance. If you got pregnant, you went to the doctor," she said. "Here, I think it's lacking."

She's hoping that 150 to 200 new mothers or pregnant women will avail themselves of AIDS testing and other health screenings at her event.

"A lot of times, when you're young, you don't get this information," Raquel said, adding that many young women rely on their mothers for this kind of thing. "Things have changed so much. I had a child three years ago and things have changed."

And then there's the whole issue of emotional and financial support. An estimated 70 percent of African-American children are born out of wedlock.

"In our culture, we have a lot of African-American men who are nonexistent in their families' lives," Raquel pointed out. "There's just that feeling that 'I'm going to have this child but he's not going to be there for me.' A lot of men who have been in their families' lives need to try to teach these younger men. It's about mentorship. Because there are so many young men who are having children."

Kitchen said part of the problem is the messages society sends out to young women. "Instead of talking down to them, let's help them understand how to pick out a good mate. It's very difficult for a woman to raise a child by herself," Kitchen said. "What we have nowadays is women saying they want the baby, but not the man. We have been sending the message at least since the '60s and the '70s that you can raise a child by yourself . . . "

Often, the desire to parent outside a stable relationship arises from a lack of perceived choices. "A lot of times, these young women don't have goals for themselves. You have to go to school. You have to have that," said Raquel, who completed her second masters degree in August - this one in educational policy, at the University of Pennsylvania.

"I just love education. I just think education is the [foundation] of anything that you do."

After leaving Syracuse, she spent a couple of years working at Villanova University, helping organize tutoring, counseling and other services for student athletes. As for her own career aspirations, Raquel looks forward to returning to the workplace someday.

"It's difficult because we travel a lot. I don't want to have a job and not be there," Raquel told me. "We definitely plan to have more kids. If it happens, it happens."

Unlike some of the young mothers she hopes to reach with her shower, Raquel has an extensive support network, including Donovan's parents.

"Don and I have been together for 13 years. They fuss at me the same way they fuss at him," she said. "His father is a committed man, committed to what he believes in . . . he definitely instilled that in Donovan and in his other son, Sean. He walked us through a lot of things early on in our marriage. He could probably see things before they're coming. He made sure that Don, when he decided to get married, that he was ready to get married."

Raquel wishes more young parents were as prepared. "To me, I think, you need to make sure your life is where it it needs to be before you bring another life into it," Raquel said. "My parents were, like, 'You get married. You have children.' "

And once the child is here, the focus has to be on the child as is the case in the McNabb household. 'Does Alexis have this? Is she OK?' . . . Don, he's very busy. So, the onus of that falls on me."

After a baby is born, "everything you do changes. Even after you have that child, certain behaviors have to stop . . . everything you do once that pregnancy test comes back positive has to be about that child."

So, when might there be more little McNabbs? "We probably would like three or four," Raquel admitted. "We need to get on it." *

To register for the Community Baby Shower scheduled for Oct. 27, call 215-927-3227 or log onto www. senatorkitchen.com.