The present study investigated the association between executive functioning (EF) and cognitive script accuracy for autobiographical events in adults with severe traumatic brain injury (sTBI). Sequelae of sTBI commonly disrupt brain areas responsible for EF and retrieval of autobiographical knowledge, but script impairments are not consistently found, likely due to protocol differences, sample heterogeneity, and failure to assess for event exposure pre-injury. The present study remedied these issues obtaining a realistic assessment of script knowledge and its relation to EF. Twenty sTBI adults and 20 healthy controls recruited from a post-acute neurorehabilitation facility completed tasks evaluating autobiographical knowledge (central actions [CAs], trivial actions [TAs]) for three common events using multiple memory measures (recall, prediction, recognition). EF was assessed with standardized neuropsychological tasks of verbal fluency and social judgment. Controls performed better than sTBI adults on all EF measures (p < 0.001), and recalled a greater proportion of CAs (F[2,19] = 4.63, p < 0.05) but similar proportions of TAs (p = 0.952). Groups did not differ in predicting (p = 0.989) or recognizing (p = 0.202) autobiographical events. EF predicted CAs (R2 = 0.425, F[2,37] = 13.66, p < 0.001) and TAs (R2 = 0.201,F[2,37] = 4.66, p < 0.05) in both groups after controlling for estimated premorbid functioning. Severe TBI adults are fairly knowledgeable about common events. Executive dysfunction may inhibit successful initiation and completion of such events. Errors rarely occurred with these familiar events and within easier memory paradigms. Thus, development of therapies introducing a graded integration into novel events is a realistic goal. Because results are based on confirmed autobiographical events, these conclusions elicit greater confidence than ever before.