Presenting: The Many Olympic Athlete Engagements That Took Place During the Milano Cortina Games
These Olympians are winning in so many ways.
I thought the seven proposals that took place at the 2024 Paris Olympics would be pretty tough to beat...but Olympians are nothing if not competitive! At the 2026 Milano Cortina Games, five Olympic athlete engagements went down—though fyi, Chloe Kim and Myles Garrett were not responsible for one of them, if you fell for that viral AI-generated photo making the rounds. Yes, medals are fun and all, but if you’re a sap for romance, I’ve rounded up all the proposals that went down at the 2026 Winter Olympics.
From Team USA’s Breezy Johnson getting a ring from her longtime boyfriend just days after getting a gold medal, to Jean-Luc Baker popping the question to his former skating rival Olivia Smart on the streets of Milan, to Ukrainian freestyle skier Kateryna Kotsar getting engaged literally seconds after qualifying for the big air final, here are some of my absolute fave proposals to go down at the 2026 Olympics.
Breezy Johnson and Connor Watkins
After taking home Team USA’s first gold medal at the 2026 Winter Olympics, Breezy also got the first engagement ring of the Games when her longtime boyfriend, Connor Watkins, popped the question at the finish line.
Connor, who had been with Breezy for nearly two-and-a-half years before his proposal, revealed to NBC that he had been planning out the romantic gesture for a year. “I was really hoping that I could get in the finish area and do it the way I wanted. And it turned out we could, and we’re just super excited,” he gushed, also explaining that the milestone moment had “gone above and beyond our wildest imagination.”
The athlete also admitted that she “may have told him that I just always kind of had the dream of getting engaged at the Olympics.”
Kateryna Kotsar and Bohdan Fashtryha
Next up we have Ukrainian freestyle skier Kateryna, whose boyfriend also surprised her at the finish line (right after she became the first Ukrainian woman to qualify for the big air final) with a ring...and on Valentine’s Day, of all days!
Kateryna later told reporters her now-fiancé was "so nervous" during the big moment. “He said in Ukrainian if I want to marry him, nothing else. He didn’t have enough time, and he was nervous. It was so cute,” she recounted, per People.
She added that she’s “still excited and can’t understand what happened tonight, because it’s two really huge things for me”— referring, of course, to her engagement and her big qualifying moment.
Olivia Smart and Jean-Luc Baker
Kateryna wasn’t the only athlete to get engaged on Valentine’s Day. On February 14, former Team USA figure skater Jean-Luc got down on one knee to ask his former rival—British-Spanish skater Olivia Smart, who competed in the 2026 Olympics—to marry him in the streets of Milan.
Though Olivia and Jean-Luc have only been dating for almost two years, they’ve been friends and competitive rivals for much longer. “We’ve been best friends at this point for like 11 or 12 years,” Jean-Luc said in a video shared by the Olympics. He also admitted that his romantic feelings for Olivia were so strong, he couldn’t stay silent any longer.
“I remember, like, this feeling in my gut of not being comfortable enough to be at her wedding as a spectator...and I honestly could not live my life not knowing that she knew how I felt about her,” he added. Once they got through the free dance competition in Beijing, he knew it was “time to say something.”
Brittany Bowe and Hilary Knight
Yet another power couple to get engaged at the Olympics: Team USA hockey team captain Hilary and her speed skater GF Brittany, both of whom competed in the 2026 Winter Games. Hilary popped the question on February 18, and she later posted a video of the moment on Instagram, writing, “Olympics brought us together. This one made us forever.”
Four years earlier, the couple went on their first date during the Beijing Games. As Brittany previously explained to People, the “bubble” created by the pandemic gave them a chance to connect without distractions.
“Hilary would ask, like, ‘Oh, do you want to go for a walk after dinner?’ And that was our first date, going to walk around the Olympic Village masked because everyone was so fearful of getting COVID,” Brittany explained.
Marijke Groenewoud and Mike Dogterom
Minutes after the Dutch speed skater won her first Olympic gold medal in the women’s mass start final on February 21, her professional cyclist boyfriend surprised her with a ring and a very important question, to which she answered, “Yes!”
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