When Jonathan Owen initially connected with now-wife Simone Biles on celebrity dating app Raya in 2020, the Packers safety wasn’t privy to her famed Olympic success.
During a recent appearance on “The Pivot Podcast,” Owens was asked about his relationship with Biles, whom he wed in the spring following their February 2022 engagement.
“Literally had been on the app for a couple of days, man, and it’s like she pops up and, I’m like ‘Let me see who this is.’ I had never really paid attention to gymnastics, so it piqued my curiosity,” the 28-year-old Owens said.
Upon matching on the app, the seven-time Olympic medalist made the first move with a message.
“I go do my workout, and I come back and I had some likes on my Instagram,” Owens recalled. “I still waited … and then I come back to my phone, and then she messaged me on the app like, ‘Hey.’”
Though Owens thought, “This got to be fake,” he was trying to piece together who Biles, 26, was.
“I didn’t know who she was at the time, but the first thing that I saw was that she just had a bunch of followers so in my mind, I’m like, ‘OK, she got to be good,’” he said.
Owens elaborated further, stating he had been unaware of the happenings at the Olympics when Biles competed in the past as he was at training camp in college.
“When she won the Olympics, I was in college and we didn’t have NBC, we didn’t have Olympics channels and we’re in camp. So I’m not paying attention to, I never would have had a moment to where I would have watched,” Owens said.
Owens played at Missouri Western from 2013-17, during which Biles won gold in the vault, floor exercise, team and all-around events at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
Days after Biles sent her first message, she and Owens spent time together.
“We hung out and it’s like, we hit it off instantly, just laughed the whole night,” he recounted.
The NFL pro then got a dose of Biles’ fame soon after, when the pair went on a cookies run in Houston.
“I think it was like a Sunday we went, it was all these moms and they’re there with their kids and we walked past and everybody stopped,” Owens said. “They asking me, ‘Hey can you take this picture?’”
Since becoming an item in 2020, Biles and Owens have remained one another’s biggest supporters.
Biles has cheered for Owens throughout this NFL season, his first in Green Bay, where he signed in May.
He spent the previous four seasons with the Houston Texans.
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