“You take the good with the bad, and at the end of the day, I’m living my dream,” Owens said
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NEED TO KNOW
- Jonathan Owens opened up about dealing with sudden attention — both negative and positive — that came with dating Simone Biles
- “It almost makes you a shell of yourself, at first,” Owens admitted in an interview with The Athletic
- Owens said he sees being called Mr. Biles as a sign of “respect”
Jonathan Owens is opening up about the pressures of his fame and being “Mr. Simone Biles.”
Owens, 31, sat down with The Athletic to talk about his NFL journey playing for four different teams since 2018, and how it led him to meeting and marrying Biles, the most decorated gymnast in Olympic history.
The Indianapolis Colts safety, who met Biles on a dating app in 2020, said he struggled at first with the attention and fame that came from dating the G.O.A.T. of gymnastics.
“It was tough at first because I’m a pretty quiet, private person,” Owens admitted. “It almost makes you a shell of yourself, at first, because of all the criticism. They’ve got something to say about everything you do. But just my wife helping me get to a point of just [understanding] they’re going to talk s— either way it goes. So you might as well live your life how you want to.”
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The Colts safety drew backlash in 2023 when he said “men are the catch” on an episode of The Pivot podcast and claimed he hadn’t heard of his wife before they met.
In his interview with The Athletic, Owens recalled the criticism. “I didn’t have my notifications on, and Simone was like, ‘Have you been on your Instagram?’ ” Owens told the outlet of the hours after the podcast episode went live. “That was my first time of really, really being in the public eye and people trying to hate on you — ‘Oh, you’re Mr. Biles!’ — and stuff like that.”
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Owens continued, “But that’s what comes with it. You take the good with the bad, and at the end of the day, I’m living my dream.”
And now, he sees it “as respect” to be called Mr. Biles. “You see who my wife is. Says a lot about me as well. Like, my confidence, and who I am as a person that she chose to be with me,” he said, per The Athletic.
Owens added, “It’s respect, because as a man in this field, [one of the] things they judge you on is who is your significant other. That says a lot about your confidence.”
Credit: Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty
The NFL player, who joined Biles at Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s star-studded wedding in July, said he’s “adjusted to” the fame, but admitted, “it’s still crazy to think about sometimes, the rooms you can be in and people I’ve met.”
Owens specifically singled out Tom Cruise, and told the outlet he couldn’t believe the actor “knows my name and was excited to see me.” He gushed, “I never would’ve thought as a sophomore in high school that this is what my life would be.”
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