Simone Biles’ husband, Jonathan Owens, is cheering her on via social media as she takes part in her final events of the 2024 Paris Olympics on Monday, August 5.
Owens, 29, shared a video of him watching televised coverage of Biles’ final events — the women’s gymnastics balance beam and floor finals — via Instagram Stories early Monday morning. In the clip, he can be heard saying, “Let’s go!” Over the video, he posted several hand-clapping emojis.
The Chicago Bears safety was in Paris to support his wife, 27, in person after being granted special leave from preseason training by the NFL team. However, he is now back in the U.S. On Sunday, Owens shared a slideshow of photographs of him training with the Bears via Instagram and captioned it, “Back at it 🏈.”
Biles has already won three gold medals during the 2024 Paris Olympics. On Saturday, August 3, she won gold in the women’s vault final. Earlier in the week, Biles and Team USA won gold in the women’s all-around team final. Biles then won the individual all-around competition.
Biles recently defended her husband after he was criticized for wearing one of her newly won gold medals in a photo shared via Instagram.
“Crazy thing is, I put my medal on every single one of my family members and took pictures. so don’t ever make assumptions. 🙄,” she wrote via Instagram. “like y’all are so f–king miserable. leave us alone.”
Owens incited controversy in December 2023 when he spoke about the early days of his relationship with the most decorated gymnast of all time. When asked on “The Pivot” podcast how he landed Biles, Owens responded, “It’s really how she pulled me, man. That’s the question,” with Biles laughing as the camera panned to her.
Biles and Owens met on the Raya dating app in 2020, and she reached out to him first.
“She messaged me on the app, like, ‘Hey,’ and I’m like, ‘That’s gotta be fake,’” he recalled. “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 [Instagram] followers. So in my mind, I’m like, ‘OK, she’s got to be good.’”
Owens also revealed that Biles traveled nearly an hour to spend time with him amid COVID-19 restrictions and acknowledged that she did most of the legwork in establishing their romance.
“I always say that the men are the catch,” he said. “She did [pull me], though, because I was fighting it. … At the time, I was afraid to commit. I was like, ‘This is my third year [in the NFL], I’m trying … it’s kind of early,’ but, you know, it happens when you least expect it.”
After Owens received major backlash for his comments, Biles, who married the NFL player in April 2023, defended his statements.
“I didn’t think anything of that interview, and he never said I wasn’t a catch. He said he was a catch. Because he is,” she said on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast in April. “I’ve never met a man like him. A lot of people that meet him are like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I want a man like that, like Jonathan.’”
Biles noted that she was present during the podcast’s filming and was “feeling great” about the interview. “I was like, ‘My man just killed that,’” she recounted, thinking that “everything was OK” until she looked at social media. “Then, I go on Twitter and everybody’s like, ‘Divorce this man, he’s mean.’”
Biles insisted that naysayers had the wrong idea about Owens. “He praises the ground that I walk on. Truly, I’ve never met a man like him. He still opens my doors,” she continued. “I’m not saying that to be like, ‘He still opens my doors because that’s to be expected of men,’ but he truly goes out of his way to do anything for me.”
Biles initially thought the reaction to Owens’ comments was “hilarious,” but once the backlash started to “really hurt,” she “broke down” over it.
“I’m like, ‘Why are you guys talking about my husband like this?’ You don’t know him. You don’t know who he is,” she added. “If anybody’s met him, they know he’s the sweetest guy and will do anything for anybody. … Talk about me all you want, but don’t come for my family.”
At the time that Owens’ remarks went viral, Biles divulged that the pair argue over which of them is the better athlete.
“We fought over it a couple times, and then we vowed once we got married, we wouldn’t talk about it again,” she said on 2023 Back That Year Up in December. “But it keeps coming up every time, but he has done my workout in the gym and he can barely do it, and then I went to their NFL workout and I crushed it.”