Meet the facility {couples} of the 2026 Games : NPR

Oksana Masters and Aaron Pike on the Beijing 2022 Winter Paralympics. They bonded at a Para Nordic competitors in 2013 over their love of espresso.

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Michael Steele/Getty Images

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MILAN — Hundreds of unbelievable athletes are participating in these Winter Games. And a variety of them simply occur to be relationship — or engaged or married to — one another.

Some take part in the identical sports activities, as teammates and even opponents, whereas others come from totally different athletic backgrounds.

Take U.S. Paralympians Oksana Masters and Aaron Pike, who each compete in a number of summer season and winter sports activities. They first met at a Para Nordic competitors in 2013, the place they bonded over their love of espresso, earlier than connecting on a deeper degree on the 2014 Sochi Games.

“We had a really special moment where we kind of realized on a gondola that this is more than just a friend — like a hug that spoke a thousand words kind of thing,” Masters instructed NPR in October. “[I] realized, ‘Oh my gosh, this is not just something like a small attraction here.'”

Fast ahead to 2022, and Pike proposed to Masters on a gondola in Wyoming. Masters has very publicly gone dress shopping — even bringing her two Paris 2024 gold medals together with her — however they have not introduced a marriage date but. They mentioned they have been contemplating getting married after the Paralympics in Italy, whereas their households are already gathered collectively.

“In Italy would be a perfect way for our forever journey [to] start together, because of skiing in the mountains,” Masters mentioned. “But, then, you need to ask him, too — more — because he’s doing nothing for the planning at all.”

NPR did ask Pike.

“I made a joke one time like: I proposed, now it’s your turn,” he mentioned with amusing. “And she will not let that go.”

Below are a number of the Team USA winter power-couples to know, plus just a few honorable mentions.

Hilary Knight and Brittany Bowe

At the socially-distanced Beijing Games in 2022, Hilary Knight requested Brittany Bowe if she needed to go for a stroll.

“That became our routine,” mentioned Bowe. “We’d walk the Village after dinner and just talk. It was cool living in a bubble and not having outside distractions.”

Now they’re sharing one other Olympics collectively.

It’s the fifth for Knight, the ladies’s hockey captain and all-time main scorer for Team USA, and the fourth for Bowe, a two-time medalist in long-track velocity skating. And this time, they don’t seem to be remoted in a bubble.

“It’s always nice to be able to support Hilary, and when we can see each other’s events,” Bowe mentioned after attending Knight’s first match. “Her family was there, my whole family was there. It just brings additional energy to the atmosphere.”

Kaysha Love and Hunter Powell

Bobsledders Kaysha Love and Hunter Powell have a good time after Love gained a race in Lake Placid, N.Y., in March 2025. The couple is now engaged.

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Bobsled athletes Kaysha Love and Hunter Powell met after they have been monitor and subject stars at their respective faculties. Love switched to bobsled and made the 2022 Olympics, then urged Powell to do the identical.

“She convinced me to go to #SlideToGlory [a USA recruitment event,] which I was very resistant to, but she talked me into it, and I’m so thankful that she did,” Powell mentioned from Cortina.

They got engaged in July 2025. Now, they’re Olympic teammates.

“It’s the coolest thing in the world,” Powell added. “I’m travelling the world for the first time in my life, chasing the dream, with the woman I love and my best friend. It doesn’t get cooler than that.”

Red Gerard and Hailey Langland

Snowboarders Red Gerard and Hailey Langland at an occasion in 2023 at Park City, Utah.

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Joe Scarnici/Getty Images for JBL

Snowboarders Red Gerard and Hailey Langland have identified one another since they have been 12, and have been in a relationship for the previous eight years.

They each competed on the Olympics in Pyeongchang in 2018 — the place Gerard gained gold — and 2022 in Beijing. He is competing once more this 12 months. She’s sidelined by an ACL harm, however staying with him and his dad and mom in Italy.

Madison Chock and Evan Bates

Evan Bates took Madison Chock on a date on her sixteenth birthday, although it did not instantly result in something.

Several years later, in 2011, they partnered up in ice dance. Six years later, Bates confessed his emotions.

“Well, I pretty much told Maddie that I loved her,” Bates told NBC in 2018. “Last year I told (her) how I really felt and that changed things a lot.”

The two obtained engaged in 2022 and married in the summertime of 2024 in Hawaii, the place Chock’s dad and mom are from. Bates instructed NPR in October that whereas “the skating career is short and finite, the relationship is much, much longer.”

“We love what we do, but we also really love each other,” Chock added. “And we’re able to take this passion and use it to foster our connection as a couple. And I think from that we’ve grown a lot through our sport, and that’s been such a great teacher for us.”

They’re not the one ice dance energy couple on Team USA: Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik have been companions on and off the ice since 2022.

Other {couples} to know

Marie-Philip Poulin, proper, and Laura Stacey of Team Canada have a good time after successful the hockey gold medal match in opposition to Team United States.

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Elsa/Getty Images

• Hockey greats Marie-Philip Poulin and Laura Stacey play collectively for the Montreal Victoire, and for Team Canada (of which Poulin is the captain). They’ve been collectively since 2017 and married since 2024. 
• Kim Meylemans and Nicole Silveira are each skeleton racers, representing opposing groups (Belgium and Brazil). They’re additionally newlyweds, having married lower than a 12 months in the past after sparking up a relationship through the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Anna Kjellbin and Ronja Savolainen met whereas taking part in collectively within the Swedish professional ladies’s hockey league, earlier than getting signed to separate groups in Canada. The now-fiances are taking part in for separate groups on the Olympics, too: Sweden and Finland. 
• There are three married couples on this 12 months’s 10-team combined doubles curling subject: 
• Italian ice dancers Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri have been collectively since 2009, with the on-ice PDA to show it. 
• Jocelyn Peterman and Brett Gallant of Canada, Switzerland’s Yannick Schwaller and Briar Schwaller-Hürlimann, and Kristin Skaslien and Magnus Nedregotten of Norway.