Olympian Gus Kenworthy and Boyfriend Matt Wilkas Have Separated But 'Remain Close Friends'
Olympic freeskier Gus Kenworthy and his actor boyfriend Matthew Wilkas have separated, PEOPLE confirms.
A rep for the former couple exclusively tells PEOPLE that Kenworthy, 27, and Wilkas, 41, have amicably decided to take a break in their relationship after nearly four years together.
“Gus and Matt are taking time apart,” the rep says. “They love and support each other and remain close friends.”
The news comes a little over a month after Kenworthy and Wilkas were last featured on each other’s Instagrams. On June 8, the former pair embarked on the AIDS Life Cycle, a seven-day, 545-mile cycling event from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
The former couple first started dating in Nov. 2015 after Kenworthy revealed to PEOPLE that he sent Wilkas a direct message on Instagram.
At the time, Kenworthy, who won a silver medal at the Olympic Winter Games in Russia in 2014, had not publically come out as gay. (He came out in October 2015.)
“It sounds bizarre, because I’ve said it to people and they were like, ‘I didn’t know people did that,’ ” Kenworthy said in Feb. 2018, not long after he competed in the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
“And it’s like, it is weird,” Kenworthy continued, “but I’ve met actually a lot of other couples that have met on Instagram … I think it’s kind of commonplace. It’s almost like a dating app or anything because you get a sense of someone, their personality, what they do, who they are, what they look like, whatever. And so it makes it easy to kind of establish a connection early on.”
A post shared by gus kenworthy (@guskenworthy) on Oct 11, 2018 at 12:02pm PDT
A post shared by gus kenworthy (@guskenworthy) on Feb 17, 2018 at 6:45am PST
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Kenworthy said he was already familiar with the actor from his starring role in the 2012 romantic-comedy Gayby.
“I remember thinking [from that movie] that he was funny and cute and that was kind of it,” Kenworthy shared. “I remembered his name, and then a little while later on the popular page of Instagram his profile came up — and he makes these really stupid little videos on his Instagram, but they’re very funny and they’re very endearing and so I followed him and he followed me back.”
After exchanging numbers and meeting up for coffee in New York City, the pair “hit it off” and remained by each other’s side. In 2018, Wilkas even tagged along with Kenworthy’s family to cheer him on at his Olympic slopestyle event in South Korea.
A post shared by gus kenworthy (@guskenworthy) on Mar 18, 2018 at 5:52pm PDT
The former pair faced challenges due to Kenworthy’s skiing career, as they were often separated due to his traveling schedule.
“It definitely has its ups and downs,” Kenworthy previously told PEOPLE. “With my job, I’m always on the road, so I think that makes it pretty tough … I think that’s hard for any relationship, and long-distance is tough.”
Despite that, Kenworthy said Wilkas was “an amazing communicator and so we kind of just talk through everything and work through stuff, and I’d say it’s a pretty good relationship. I’m happy about it.”
