Simone Biles has settled down with Jonathan Owens — but she’s not ready to give up her gymnastics dreams.
“People think if you’re a wife, you can’t be a professional athlete, you can’t be a gymnast, you can’t do whatever,” the gymnast, 26, told Olympics.com on Thursday, October 5. “And I came to the realization, like, yeah, I can still be a wife and be out there.”
Biles — who spoke to the outlet shortly before making history at the Artistic Gymnastics World Championships for being the most decorated gymnast of all time — married Owens, 28, in May. She’s since made sure to balance their relationship with her athletic training.
“[I’m] even being intentional outside of the gym, making time for me and my husband, making time for my family, making time for those vacations, which before I wouldn’t say necessarily I skipped because y’all know I have my vacation time,” Biles said on Thursday. “But I feel like before, it’s just like you put relationships and all of that on the back burner. I was, like, married to gymnastics and now I feel like I’m attached to so many other things and gymnastics is just a part of my day.”
While Biles noted that she used to live at her gym, now she can’t wait to go home at the end of the day to see Owens and their dogs.
Owens is a professional football player, who signed with the Green Bay Packers in May.
“We’re [in] a long-distance relationship right now. It’s pretty crazy because he left right after the wedding,” Biles, who trains in Texas, added. “But it’s so much fun having two professional athletes and people think that we would compete so much. He’s competitive. I’m not competitive. If we’re playing a video game or whatever or cards, I think that’s so much fun and I don’t care if I win or lose.”
Biles and Owens started dating in 2020 after matching on dating app Raya. They got engaged two years later in February 2022. After initially exchanging vows in a courthouse ceremony in April, they held a larger wedding ceremony in May.
“I think we like to have a lot of fun, but we also like to relax because at the end of the day, we both workout so much and our schedules just look so different,” Biles quipped to Olympics.com of their daily life. “It’s not as crazy as you think, like we’ll be doing therapy together or go get massages together or our nails done.”
The Texas native started taking gymnastics classes at age 6 and and earned an invite to the junior national team camp by 14. She had several world championship gold medals before she made her Olympics debut in Rio de Janeiro at age 19 in 2016.
She scored her first Olympic gold medals in the individual all-around, vault and floor, a bronze medal in balance beam and a gold medal as part of Team USA.
Following her April 2023 wedding to NFL star Jonathan Owens, she returned to the mat in August 2023, making it clear that she was preparing to go to the 2024 Paris Olympics.