Talk about a power couple! Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe, both Olympic gold medalists, started dating in 2017.
The pair first met while backstage at a photo shoot for the 2016 Rio Olympics. In 2021, they gave NBC the details of their first encounter. “She was in her basketball uniform and she had her hair down,” Rapinoe said.
“We kinda crossed [paths] and she was like, ‘Oh, hey! Ready for your game?'” Bird added. “I was like, haha… funny.”
The soccer star revealed that she kicked herself at the time for making “such a bad impression.”
“So dorky,” Bird teased. “I walked away like, ‘I thought you were supposed to be cool?’ We joke about it now cause she was a total dork.”
Rapinoe came out as gay publicly in 2012. In 2020, she told The Sunday Magazine that coming out made her “a better, more full person.” The Olympian added, “I think that any time you hide even the smallest part of yourself, you’re not able to fully capture your potential just in life in general. So I feel like that was part of me … maturing and allowing myself to reach my full potential in all aspects of my life.”
Bird waited to come out to the public until she and Rapinoe began dating in 2017. “I’m gay. Megan’s my girlfriend … these aren’t secrets to people who know me,” she told ESPNW at the time. “I don’t feel like I’ve not lived my life. I think people have this assumption that if you’re not talking about it, you must be hiding it, like it’s this secret. That was never the case for me.” The Seattle Storm player had already been out to her friends and family for years.
The athletes got engaged in October 2020 after three years of dating. Bird announced the news with a captionless Instagram photo of Rapinoe down on one knee on the edge of an infinity pool.
In a May 2022 interview with The Seattle Times, the basketball star revealed why she and Rapinoe still haven’t tied the knot.
“It’s funny. It’s more Megan. We’re on Megan’s schedule,” she said. “My schedule is open in the offseason. I got time. WNBA is only in the summer. I got time. We’re basically waiting to see what Megan’s soccer future holds and then we’ll go on that. The soccer schedule is a nightmare. They literally play all year. If I had to guess a year, I think the World Cup is 2023 for them. It’ll probably be after that. It’s purely based on schedule. It’s not even what we want. If it was up to us, we would have done it a year ago.”
Scroll through for a timeline of their relationship:
The two athletes met for the first time while backstage at a photoshoot for the 2016 Rio Olympics. Bird told NBC that Rapinoe was a “total dork” the first time they met. Richard Ellis/UPI/Shutterstock
Bird announced that she is gay and in a relationship with Rapinoe in an interview with ESPNW. “I’m gay. Megan’s my girlfriend … these aren’t secrets to people who know me,” the Olympic gold medalist told the outlet. KCS Presse / MEGA
The couple posed in the nude together for ESPN’s Body Issue. “I mean, the Body Issue is just cool,” Rapinoe said at the time. “I’ve done it once before. But even just looking through the magazine every year, it's a celebration of athletes in the way that we look, the muscles, the scars." David Silpa/UPI/Shutterstock
The couple announced their engagement via Instagram with a captionless photo of Rapinoe down on one knee. Richard Ellis/UPI/Shutterstock
Rapinoe congratulated her fiancé for winning her 5th Olympic Gold Medal in Tokyo. “I am so proud of you @sbird10 ❤️. As if I could love you any more 🥰. Congrats baby!” Rapinoe captioned an Instagram photo of her and Bird sharing an intimate moment courtside. BPI/Shutterstock
Bird told E! That she hopes she and Rapinoe can be an inspiration to LGBTQ+ youth. "I think it's so important that when Megan and I are walking down the street, there could be a little gay kid that says, ‘Oh! They're not the weird ones. They're just happy and they're living their lives,' and I feel like that's just so important,” she said. “For me in middle school, high school, even in college, the gay one was the weird one and I just feel really passionately that we're able to change that." The World of Sports SC/Shutterstock
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