Galen was a longtime fan of the USC Trojans, buying his first football season tickets in 1947. He never played sports for USC, but had been a fan since boyhood, when he worked at the Coliseum as a hot dog vendor at Trojan football games. He proposed to his wife in front of 3,000 people at a USC/Notre Dame football rally and had the wedding band perform "Fight On" at his wedding. He presented her a Spirit of Troy marching band helmet on their wedding day; it was his second marriage. Galen's marriage to his first wife, the former Dena Wallerstein, with whom he had three children, ended in divorce.