Serena Williams and Alexis Ohanian met in 2015 under fairly ordinary circumstances, at a hotel restaurant in Rome, a detail that feels almost quaint next to the life they have built since. Nine years and two daughters later, theirs remains one of the more closely watched relationships to come out of professional sports, mostly because both of them have been unusually open about what it actually looks like from the inside.
A wedding and a first daughter, the same year
The couple married in New Orleans in November 2017, the same year they welcomed their first daughter, Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr. Williams later wrote about the emotional weight of that stretch, crediting the pregnancy itself with teaching her a kind of strength she had not previously known she had.
Olympia's birth was not simple. Williams underwent emergency surgery afterward, an experience that pushed her to speak publicly about gaps in maternal health care, including in a CNN opinion piece arguing that every mother deserves a safe pregnancy and delivery regardless of who she is.
A second daughter and a partnership built on visibility
In May 2023, Williams announced a second pregnancy in typically memorable fashion, revealing it at the Met Gala in a custom Gucci gown. Their second daughter, Adira River Ohanian, arrived that August. Around the same time, Ohanian spoke about hoping to raise another daughter well, joking that he was fully prepared to be a girl dad even if more children eventually joined the family.
Both have credited the other publicly and often. Williams has said Ohanian never dims her light, but instead puts her in it. Ohanian, for his part, has described being with Williams as a constant nudge toward becoming a better version of himself.
Nearly a decade in, still building
Today the family lives together in Florida, with Olympia now eight and Adira two. For a couple that built much of their public profile on ambition, both in sport and in business, the throughline of their relationship has increasingly become the quieter stuff: school pickups, sibling dynamics, and the two of them figuring out parenthood in real time, in front of an audience that has followed nearly every step of it.