Racing legend Tony Stewart and his wife Leah Pruett welcomed their first child, Dominic James Stewart, in late 2024. While preparing for parenthood, the couple established a clear division of responsibilities that highlighted their unique dynamic. Stewart, known for his candid personality both on and off the track, revealed the surprisingly limited role his wife assigned him in the lead-up to their son’s birth.
While Leah was busy moving them into a new home, setting up baby rooms, and planning all their travel around their hectic racing schedules, Stewart kept racing. He even took over Leah’s Top Fuel dragster while she focused on preparing for motherhood.
Tony Stewart’s “Only Job” in Preparing for Fatherhood
“That was my only job. She knew not to give me too much responsibility because she’s the responsible one in the family. I was tasked with the job of creating a list of names that I liked and then handed it over to her, and then she whittled down what she liked out of what I liked. Felt like that was a pretty fair request,” Stewart humorously admitted about his limited role in the baby preparations via X.
He couldn’t stop praising how Leah handled everything else: “She has literally, for the whole season, moved us into the first house… got the baby room done in Indiana, got travel stuff ready when we’re traveling to the races on the weekend.”
Even the simple task of naming their son wasn’t that easy for the 53-year-old racing star. After meeting so many people throughout his long career, Stewart said it “took out a lot of good names because of people that I knew or friends that had kids with those names, so it made the process really hard.”
I also wondered how Tony Stewart and Leah Pruett came up with the name Dominic James Stewart. This is what Stewart said, and why there was one name that was definitely off the table: pic.twitter.com/0R9DOJlWrv
— Bob Pockrass (@bobpockrass)
Stewart wanted his son to have his own identity, and thus, he didn’t want to consider his own given name, Anthony. “Absolutely not. There was no way in hell I would give a kid a strike against him right out of the gate like that,” he said firmly.
While Leah did all the heavy lifting, Stewart admitted, “I’ve been out racing and having fun doing what I love to do.” But he pointed out it actually worked well for both of them: “She loves to organize, so she was happy. I was happy, I wasn’t in her way and getting in her hair, and I got to do what I wanted to do, so it was win-win.”
When their son finally arrived just before an NHRA race at Pomona, Stewart experienced something completely new. “When I saw his face today, just an emotion that I’ve never had before,” he shared about becoming a dad for the first time.
The way Tony and Leah handled baby prep shows that sometimes the best partnerships happen when people stick to what they’re good at, whether that’s organizing everything or just coming up with some baby names.