In 2020, Simone Biles met her now-husband, Jonathan Owens. At that time, she had already won four Olympic gold medals, but the football pro had no idea about her achievements.
With seven Olympic and 30 World Championship medals, Simone Biles, 27, is one of the most decorated gymnasts in history and is considered one of the greatest gymnasts of all time. Currently, the American is competing for more Olympic gold at the 2024 Paris Games, cheered on by her husband, football player Jonathan Owens, 29. Since March 2024, he has been playing as a safety for the Chicago Bears. One might assume that, as a professional athlete, he was already aware of Simone Biles, but he actually first heard about the exceptional gymnast on a dating app.
Simone Biles Met Jonathan Owens Through a Dating App
Young, successful, and adored in the sports world: Simone Biles and Jonathan Owens share a similar destiny. While she started gymnastics in elementary school, he discovered his passion for football in high school. Both Biles and Owens trained since their youth to one day make it to the professional league. They both succeeded: 19-year-old Biles won four gold medals at the 2016 Rio Olympics. Owens entered the NFL at 22, joining the Arizona Cardinals in April 2018.
Two years later, the young athletes met through the celebrity-favored dating app “Raya.” Just one week after Biles signed up, she was already chatting with her future husband, as she revealed to “Vanity Fair” in January 2024. “In the second week, I met him in person, and the rest is history. We were addicted [to each other],” the gymnast recalled. Owens added, “We could talk all day and stayed up late, and there wasn’t a single awkward moment.” Since their relationship began during the COVID-19 pandemic, most of their dates involved watching movies, playing board games, and drinking sangria, as the couple told the magazine.
NFL Pro Had No Idea How Successful the Olympian Was
Owens had no clue he was falling in love with one of the most successful gymnasts of all time. “A lot of people don’t believe me when I say I had no idea,” said the football player, who was at a training camp at Missouri Western State University during Biles’ Olympic breakthrough in 2016. “When she won the Olympics, I was in college, and we didn’t have NBC, we didn’t have the Olympic channels, we were in [training] camp,” he explained in the “The Pivot” podcast in 2023, as reported by “People.” He occasionally followed basketball or track and field, but “I never thought, ‘Oh, I’ll check out gymnastics,'” admitted the 29-year-old. It wasn’t until Owens looked at Biles’ Instagram profile that he suspected something: “She has a lot of followers, she must be pretty good.”
“He Really Believes He’s the Best at Everything”
Biles must have been impressed that the former Green Bay Packers player wasn’t intimidated by her success. She gushed about her husband, whom she married on April 22, 2023, in an interview: “Honestly, he’s obviously very handsome. But aside from his looks, he was so kind and friendly, and I think what I liked about him was his confidence. He really believes he’s the best at everything.”
The public witnessed this impressive confidence in December 2023: In “The Pivot” podcast, Owens was asked if he thought he was “the catch” in his relationship with Simone Biles, to which he responded, “I always say that the men are the catch.” This provocative statement received significant backlash on social media. His relentless ambition not only motivates Owens the most but is also the quality that impressed him most about Biles, who once said that her biggest competitor is herself.
