Simone Biles’ husband, Jonathan Owens, wasn’t kidding when he said he had no idea who the 26-year-old gymnastics star was before they met. The 28-year-old football player insisted in a new interview that he only discovered Simone’s celebrity status when he looked at her social media profiles.
“A lot of people don’t believe me when I say I had no clue,” Jonathan told Vanity Fair in a new interview. “I never once was like, ‘Oh, let me check gymnastics out.’ I was like, ‘Man, she got a lot of followers, she must be pretty good.’”
The duo started dating during the COVID-19 pandemic, so Simone and Jonathan spent time at each other’s homes to get to know each other. While recalling those days, the NFL player said, “I just noticed her laugh. It was just contagious. We could talk all day and we’d stayed up late, and there just wasn’t an awkward moment.”
As for Simone, the Olympic champion joked during her interview, “I’m going to be honest, obviously he’s very fine. [But] besides his looks, he was so sweet and kind, and I think what I liked about him was his confidence. He truly believes he’s the best at everything.”
One month ago, Jonathan shocked fans when he said on “The Pivot” podcast that he wasn’t aware who Simone was when they met on the dating app Raya.
“When she won the Olympics, I was in college, and we didn’t have NBC, we didn’t have Olympics channels, and we were in [training] camp [in] late July, early August,” he explained. “So, I’m not paying attention. I never would’ve had a moment where I would’ve watched [her compete].”
This revelation, however, didn’t stir up as much controversy as Jonathan’s other comment from the same interview. At the time, he joked, “I always say that the men are the catch.”
Nevertheless, Simone didn’t seem to mind her husband’s playful quip. Shortly after he received backlash for the statement, Jonathan shared a wedding photo of him and the Olympian alongside the caption, “Unbothered. Just know we locked in over here.” Not only that, but he even sent his wife flowers earlier this week, and Simone shared a photo of the bouquet to her Instagram Stories.