Jonathan Owens showed us more red flags in his “The Pivot Podcast” interview while recalling how his romance with Simone Biles began. He explained they matched on a dating app, and the iconic gymnast then liked a few of his Instagram photos. However, he suggested he didn’t react to her obvious advances. Biles sent the athlete a message after being met with silence, and Owens got a little too candid when he admitted they probably wouldn’t be together had she not made that extra move. “If she wouldn’t have messaged me, chances were, I probably wouldn’t [have messaged her], I probably would have just … [my] mind would have went somewhere else and wouldn’t have,” he said.
The athlete also went on to reveal he wasn’t looking for a committed relationship when Biles expressed her interest. “I was fighting it,” he admitted. When co-host Ryan Clark suggested Owens wasn’t that interested in Biles, he didn’t wholeheartedly agree, but noted, “I was afraid to commit. I’m like, ‘Ah man. This is my third year [playing football]. This is kind of early.'”
Owens not initially responding to Biles’ digital advances suggested he wasn’t that into her, and the two were clearly on different pages at the start of their romances. Luckily, Owens changed his mind about wanting a committed relationship, but him admitting publicly he probably wouldn’t have messaged Biles first was surely humiliating for his wife and a detail better left unsaid.
Their busy schedules forced them into long-distance. Simone Biles and Jonathan Owens make one of the busiest couples in sport. While Owens spends a lot of time focused on his NFL career, Biles is busy training and competing as a gymnast. And that means spending a lot of time apart. “A lot of people think it’s just a one-year commitment, but it truly is the four years leading up to the Olympics,” Biles explained to Olympics.com in 2025 of her dedication to being an Olympian. She also confirmed they’d only just taken their honeymoon in South Africa, despite tying the knot almost two years earlier.
Biles hasn’t been shy about sharing how difficult she finds being away from her husband, who plays for the Chicago Bears and previously the Green Bay Packers, despite them building a home in Houston, Texas. “Unfortunately, we’re actually long-distance,” Biles said on “Today” in 2023. “We started long-distance less than a week before … we were married. “Right after [our wedding] he went to Green Bay and signed, and two days later, he was up there, so it’s been different,” she added. The following year, Biles told E! News, “Since my husband and I got married we’ve been doing long-distance.” She added they’d been able to spend more time together over the Holidays and they’d bought a home in Chicago, though both still have to travel for their careers.
Though long-distance romances can work (including the sex aspect), a 2010 study suggested relationships where couples can’t spend regular time together in person don’t last as long as conventional, in-person romances. It found short- or medium-distance couples stay together for an average of 7.3 years, while long-distance relationships only last an average of 2.9 years.
