When Oksana Masters and Aaron Pike met at a Para Nordic competition in 2013, they bonded over coffee. That casual connection deepened at the 2014 Sochi Games, and Pike proposed on a gondola in Wyoming in 2022. Now Masters is dress shopping for their wedding—she's even considering bringing her two Paris 2024 gold medals to fittings. They haven't set a date yet, but the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina will mark their first Games as an engaged couple.
Masters and Pike are among a remarkable cluster of athlete couples heading to Italy next year, each with their own story of how elite sport became the backdrop for love. These aren't just feel-good sidebars; they're evidence of how shared intensity, mutual respect, and years spent in the same competitive spaces can forge something deeper.
When Training Partners Become Life Partners
Hilary Knight, Team USA's women's hockey captain and all-time leading scorer, and Brittany Bowe, a two-time Olympic medalist in speed skating, used the isolation of Beijing 2022 to strengthen their relationship. They'd walk the socially-distanced Olympic Village together, and now they're returning to competition as a couple, with their families in the stands.
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Start Your News DetoxMadison Chock and Evan Bates took a different path. As ice dance partners since 2011, they spent years perfecting synchronization before Bates confessed his feelings in 2017. They got engaged in 2022, married in Hawaii in 2024, and will compete together in Milan-Cortina. "We love what we do, but we also really love each other," Chock said—a statement that captures the delicate balance these couples navigate.
Bobsledders Kaysha Love and Hunter Powell met as college track and field athletes. Love convinced Powell to switch to bobsled, and after getting engaged in 2025, they'll now compete as Olympic teammates. Snowboarders Red Gerard and Hailey Langland have known each other since age 12 and have been together for eight years; Gerard won gold in 2018, and though Langland is sidelined by an ACL injury this year, she's staying with Gerard and his family in Italy during the Games.
The 2026 roster includes other notable couples: hockey greats Marie-Philip Poulin and Laura Stacey, who play together for Team Canada; skeleton racers Kim Meylemans (Belgium) and Nicole Silveira (Brazil), who married less than a year ago despite competing for rival nations; Swedish and Finnish hockey players Anna Kjellbin and Ronja Savolainen, now engaged; and three married curling couples competing in mixed doubles.
What these stories reveal is that the highest levels of sport don't just demand physical excellence—they demand the kind of understanding that comes from living inside the same pressures, sacrifices, and victories. When two people know what it takes to reach the Olympics, they already speak the same language.
