Inside Simone Biles and Jonathan Owens' Sweetly Supportive Road to Engagement

Simone Biles' NFL player fiancé Jonathan Owens lifted her up when the going got tough on an international scale, and now they're both in it to win it till forever.

By Natalie Finn Feb 23, 2022 6:00 PMTags
Watch: Olympic Gymnast Simone Biles Is Engaged: See Her Ring!

Simone Biles gets so many messages, it's pretty impossible to keep up with all of them, even the ones from famous fans, so a lot of the time she doesn't even check her inbox.

Luckily, Jonathan Owens checks his.

"Girls don't be shy. make the first move. never know what'll happen," Biles advised in a Feb. 21 Q&A session on her Instagram Story, a nod to how she and her fiancé first met.

Owens popped the question on Valentine's Day, less than two years after Biles decided to go for it in March 2020.

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She was newly single after ending a three-year relationship with gymnast Stacey Ervin Jr. that had also produced its share of Insta-adorable highlights. ("It's hard being young and having that long of a relationship and then ending it," the now-24-year-old told Vogue of the split last summer. "But it was for the best.")

But Owens hadn't noticed any of their PDA. In fact, he didn't even realize that one of the most famous athletes alive had just dropped him a line.

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"Her work ethic was really the first thing that caught my eye," Owens said on the 2021 Facebook Watch series Simone vs. Herself. "I never really watched gymnastics before I first started talking to her. When I met her, I honestly didn't know who she was." (There was no doubt after she smoked him in a friendly rope-climbing challenge at the gym one day.)

The Houston Texans safety joined Biles' hometown NFL team in September 2019 after being waived by the Arizona Cardinals, a move that surely helped put him on her radar. Owens hails from St. Louis and played college ball at Missouri Western State, where he also made the honor roll while majoring in pre-physical therapy. 

But all that was for Biles to find out. The first Instagram post of his that she ever liked (thank you, social media sleuths) was from Nov. 27, 2019, a picture of Owens in uniform captioned with a Bible quote, "He may not come when you want him, but he'll always be there on time, Never early never late," to which he added, "Always keep faith and trust the plan."

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The next pic she liked? A shirtless shot of Owens on vacation posted March 9, 2020. 

"He would say I slid into his DMs," Biles told the Wall Street Journal's WSJ Magazine last summer. "I saw him and I was like, 'Oh, he's pretty cute,' so I said hi…and then I saw that he was in the Houston area, so we started chatting a little bit, and then we went to hang out a week or two later."

According to the WSJ report, Biles' younger sister Adria took it upon herself to ask the fellow Simone kept FaceTiming with if he'd like to join them at an upcoming lake house getaway. He did, and his tryout earned him a spot at future family dinners.

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Fast-forward to the betrothed duo appearing on TODAY Feb. 18 to unpack Owens' months-in-the-making proposal.

"We clicked really, really well in the beginning because we're athletes and we have the same busy schedules," Biles told hosts Hoda KotbWillie Geist, Al Roker and Carson Daly. (Truly a team effort reporting on this engagement!) "But other than that, since it was kind of a COVID relationship, we're with each other 24/7, so I feel like now when we're not with each other it's almost weird. We're always texting or calling each other. It's kind of gross in a way."

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But a really good way.

Biles acknowledged on her Instagram Story that, while they'd been together less than two years, it "feels like 4 or 5," and she "wouldn't change it for the world."

"It moved fairly quickly & we got to know each other on a deep level fast," she wrote. 

Owens concurred, recalling on TODAY, "We just kind of started hanging out more and more and you start to want to see a person...I started to want to see her more." And he knew that it was really serious when his English bulldog, Zeus, would see Owens pick up his bag and get excited at the prospect that they were about to leave for her place.

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And soon enough, no one had to get up to leave anymore. "When you know you know!!!!" Biles wrote.

So Owens was there when Biles got back in the gym after it was closed down for seven weeks due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and he was there when her championship-level training ramped up again.

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"Whenever we come home we kind of try to wind down, watch a movie or watch one of our shows we're watching, and just relax," Biles told E! News last May. "Or most of the time we'll be in compression boots together, doing recovery, or hanging out with our dogs in the backyard. And it's fairly easy because we're kind of both too tired to do anything...But he's always so motivating, especially if I get up from a nap or in the morning, I'm like, 'Ugh, I don't want to go back to the gym.'"

He'd encourage her, "'Yes you can, you can do it, you have this many more weeks, you can do it and you're gonna do it good!'" Biles recounted. "And I'm like, 'Oh my god, thank you.' It's just that kind of support that I love."

And Owens was there, at least in spirit, when she didn't have the Tokyo Olympics experience that seemingly the entire world had been expecting of her.

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Simone Biles' 2020 Tokyo Olympics Journey

"Your strength and courage is unmatched and you inspire me more and more everyday SB," he wrote on Instagram in the wake of Biles' decision to pull out of the women's gymnastics team event at the 2020 (by way of 2021) Summer Olympics. "You always gone be my champ baby and don't you ever forget that, i love you so much and i can't wait till you come home and i get to see that beautiful smile again."

Though unable to be in Japan because it conflicted with the start of training camp (and the Games' pandemic restrictions would've prevented him from going with her anyway), Owens was still watching Biles' every move on TV from home—and, after having spent the better part of a year by her side, he knew something was up.

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"I was sick for her, just because I can see her face, I kind of know her facial expressions, I can kind of read her lips and kind of know what was going on and kind of what she was telling her coach," he told ESPN on Aug. 5, a week after millions of people had watched Biles execute one shaky vault at the start of the team final and decide it wasn't safe to keep going.

"I kind of already knew what was going on beforehand," Owens recalled, "so I was just really hoping she was going to get over it and be able to go out there and perform. So I was sick to my stomach because she wasn't able to go out there."

Biles, who told E! News last May that Owens was "so encouraging" and understanding about the demands of her sport, was open in the weeks and months leading up to Tokyo about the fact that it had not been a normal ride, that the year-long postponement of the Games definitely threw a wrench in her and the rest of the U.S. team's momentum.

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And for Biles, along with the usual physical stressors of competition was the pressure that came with being expected to match—or perhaps even top—the four gold medals and one bronze she earned at the Rio Olympics in 2016. Over the course of her career, she'd amassed a record 25 world championship medals, 19 of them gold.

Added to that, unforgettably, was the emotional exhaustion from publicly coming forward in 2018 as one of the hundreds of sexual assault victims of former national team doctor Larry Nassar, who was sentenced to life in prison that year for his crimes. She pressed on with the additional burden of feeling it was up to her to make sure the horror of what happened to so many girls resonated, to ensure the culture that allowed Nassar's behavior to go on unchecked for decades was changed for good.

"In 2018 I kind of realized, Wow, I'm one of the only remaining survivors in the sport [still competing at this level]," Biles told WSJ Magazine last summer. "They can't brush that under the rug, and they can't stop talking about it." 

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Still, she seemed to be persevering as always, earning her record seventh all-around gold medal at the USA Gymnastics National Championships in June and landing one gravity-defying trick after another in her practice sessions.

But once she got to Tokyo, Biles felt off.

"She was kind of in a funk when everything wasn't going right," Owens told ESPN. "When you're used to everything going right for so long, and all of a sudden you kind of hit a hiccup in your performance, you kind of get down on yourself, kind of lose confidence. And that was kind of one of the things I was trying to make sure [to do] keep her positive."

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He knows a few things about team sports, but, he added, "It was hard for me to really understand what she was going through because I'm not on that stage and dealing with those pressures and everything, but I just try to be as understanding as possible."

Biles ended up withdrawing from every event except balance beam, earning a bronze for her effort to go with the team silver that the U.S. women still pulled off with their usual leader cheering from the sidelines.

Owens said he was "so proud" of Biles for getting back out there, "just to be able to overcome mentally what was going on. She kind of altered her beam routine, but I was just happy for her."

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And when she got home after what was the longest amount of time they'd spent away from each other since they started dating, they got right back into what had become their favorite routine.

That is, just being together.

"Open practices aka bring your girlfriend to work day," Biles captioned an Aug. 6 shot of her with Owens on the field.

As football season got underway, Biles kept busy, vacationing with friends in Cabo, attending the Met Gala and the MTV Video Music Awards and otherwise de-stressing before heading out on her long-planned Gold Over America Tour with an all-star gymnastics troupe that included Tokyo Olympics teammates Jordan Chiles and Jade Carey.

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Meanwhile, the support system ran both ways, Owens having had his own share of ups and downs in his sport. He missed the entire 2018-19 season with an injury and then, after he was signed to the Texans' practice squad, he was promoted to the active roster, waived two days later, re-signed to the practice squad and then given a reserve/future contract in January 2020, meaning he at least knew he'd be reporting for training camp with the Texans.

Then the whole sign-waive, active-practice rigmarole started again in September 2020—and again at the beginning of the 2021 season.

Biles was his biggest fan throughout, whether he was playing on any given Sunday or not. And when he finally started a game this past December, she was there.

"#36 showed all the way out today starting! don't mess with him," she wrote Dec. 19. "I'm so proud of you babe!!! I love watching you live your dream!" And when he notched his first career interception and fumble recovery the following week, she congratulated him accordingly.

By then, Owens was already consulting his jeweler.

Over the course of two and a half months, the 26-year-old would-be groom and his cousin mapped out the big moment, booking the restaurant, arranging for the whole proposal to be captured on video, etc. And Owens made sure to talk to Biles' parents, Ron and Nellie, first to get their blessing.

"I thought it might happen this year but definitely not on Valentine's Day," Biles said on TODAY. "That's why it was such a shock. The way he set up everything was just so seamless."

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True story, Owens added, "She really had no clue, she thought it was a normal day."

Sharing the news on Instagram Feb. 15, Biles wrote, "THE EASIEST YES...I can't wait to spend forever & ever with you, you're everything I dreamed of and more! let's get married FIANCÉ."

Touchdown, Owens.

Biles said her gleaming oval-cut, 3-carat diamond ring "definitely beats a gold medal" and was now her "most prized possession."

As for planning their big day, the bride-to-be spilled some details on Instagram Story Feb. 21, including that "it will be a destination wedding" and a beach would be involved.

"I don't think I'll be a bridezilla because I'm making sure I know exactly what I want," Biles wrote, "Also I'll definitely hire a planner," because "between this and building a house our hands are full."

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That house is in the Houston area, which will remain their home base even if the whims of the NFL result in the couple having to move around some.

They now have a fur brood of three, Zeus joining Biles' beloved French bulldogs Lilo and Rambo, but adding some more humans to the mix are part of their overall, if not immediate, life plan.

"God willing one day," she wrote, "but taking everything one step at a time. definitely future plans." (She ideally wants two, and he's whittled his hopes for an entire football team down to three.)

Asked by another curious fan what her favorite thing was about her fiancé, Biles replied, "The way he loves me unconditionally & wholeheartedly. The fact that he's my best friend is EVERYTHING."

Who could ask for anything more?