Serena Williams and his internet entrepreneur husband Alexis Ohanian are the proud parents of a daughter now.
Serena Williams is a national asset thanks to her superior tennis skills. However, she is a lot more than that. She is also a wife and a mother. The 39-year-old tennis star got married to Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit, in November 2017. The couple had welcomed their daughter, Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr., two months prior, in September 2017. While the sportswoman and her internet entrepreneur and investor husband are happily married now, they met in a hilarious way that could have gone either way.
On their first meeting, Williams almost didn't speak to Ohanian. She actually wanted him to move away from her table so she could accommodate more of her friends. The couple met in the beautiful city of Rome in 2015. While the tennis star was there for the Italian Open, Ohanian was there to speak at the Festival of Media Global conference, as per Refinery 29.
He was seated right next to her table, where she was with her friends, who tried to make Ohanian leave. One of her friends even lied and said that there was a rat nearby. However, Williams was forthcoming and said, "No, we just don’t want you sitting there. We’re going to use that table." They ended up talking to each other more, she invited him to sit with them, and the Reddit co-founder was invited to the tennis star's match. Back then, he "really had no respect for tennis," he told Vanity Fair.
The couple stayed in touch and their first date ended up being in one of the most romantic cities in the world: Paris. The sportswoman had invited the internet entrepreneur a few weeks later and they spent the day going to the zoo and walking for six hours. However, her now-husband wasn't sure that she would show up.
"Even if she blows me off and we don’t even hang out, I’m still going to have an amazing time in Paris, and I’ll have an even better story for all my childhood friends when I was like, ‘Yeah, I went to Paris for a weekend. I was supposed to meet up with Serena Williams, she blew me off, but I’ve got other friends there, and we had a great time,'" Ohanian thought to himself.
In a few months, he became not a just fan of her but also of tennis. After dating for more than a year, Ohanian went down on one knee in December 2016 and proposed. He took her to the same hotel in Rome where they met and booked the same table, as per Brides. He even got a toy rat to recreate the joke from their first meeting. The tennis star obviously said "Yes."
Just a month after the engagement, the 39-year-old realized she was pregnant. She ended up taking six tests and all of them were positive. Instead of telling Alexis, she just handed him a paper bag with the positive tests. The couple welcomed their daughter in September and they named her after Ohanian, and her initials also pay homage to William's 2017 Australian Open win. She was pregnant at the time.
They tied the knot two months after their baby girl was born. Williams wore a ballgown by Sarah Burton from Alexander McQueen — the same designer who made Kate Middleton's outfit for her wedding.
Married for more than three years, the couple is proud parents, who regularly share photos of their child on social media. In 2020, she gave some insight into her relationship.
"Marriage is not bliss but it can be if you work at it," she said, as per Prevention. She also revealed what she prizes the most in her marriage. "A dealbreaker for me in a relationship is definitely loyalty," she said in the video. "Well, not having it, that is," she added. The mom-of-one revealed that she "learned that love is an amazing feeling, and if you have an opportunity to feel it, then it’s a special thing."
References:
https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/serena-williams-husband-alexis-ohanian-married-timeline#
https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2017/06/serena-williams-cover-story
https://www.brides.com/serena-williams-alexis-ohanian-relationship-timeline-4782817#
Cover image source: Getty Images | Photo by (L)Jim Spellman (R) Hannah Peters
