Simone Biles Fans Are Furious That Jonathan Owens Said He's the 'Catch' in Their Relationship
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Simone Biles fans are not happy with her husband, Jonathan Owens.
During a recent joint appearance on The Pivot podcast, the 28-year-old Green Bay Packers safety described himself as the “catch” in his relationship with the four-time Olympic gold medalist—and he didn't seem to be kidding.
When asked by co-host Channing Crowder “how in the hell" he managed to “pull” the most decorated gymnast in history, Owens responded, “It's really how she pulled me, man. That's the question.”
Owens went on to explain that he “didn't know” who Biles when she reached out to him on the Raya dating app back in 2020. While this is not a revelation—Owens said the same thing to Texas Monthly in June 2021—he expanded on their origin story, emphasizing how little he knew of her career. “When she won the Olympics, I was in college and we didn't have NBC, we didn't have Olympics channels,” he explained, noting that he realized “she's gotta be good” because she had "a bunch of followers” on Instagram.
While the podcast hosts—and many others on the Internet—seemed to find his cluelessness hard to believe, another statement inspired even more ire. In response to being asked if he felt he was the “catch” in the relationship, he said, “I always say that the men are the catch.” He went on to admit that he was initially “fighting” their connection because he wasn't ready to “commit.”
“I'm like, 'It's kinda early.' But you know, it happens when you least expect it,” Owens said. "When we hung out, we just hit it off instantly. Laughed the whole night."
Overall, these comments did not sit well with viewers, who flooded an Instagram clip from the interview with criticism and took to other forms of social media to slam the football player. “This is really odd that you would degrade your wife like this on a public platform,” one Instagram user wrote. “You will forever be known as Simone bile’s husband. You’re not the catch lmao.”
Over on TikTok, users seemed to be split over what was Owens' bigger offense: claiming he didn't know who Simone Biles was, describing himself as the catch, or the fact that she was in the room when it all went down.
“I, like many others, am mortified by Simone Biles' husband's behavior,” TikTok user @brit_reynolds said in one video. “When I first saw the podcast, I was like, ‘who the fuck is this guy?'” The social media user went on to say she refuses to look him up, repeating the popular sentiment, “That's Simone Biles' husband for the rest of his life…hopefully ex-husband.”
It seems Simone Biles does not agree. During the same podcast, Crowder pushed back on a cohost's joke that Biles was the “lucky” one, saying, “This man is a hell of a safety. He will never be as good as a safety as this little motherfucker is as a gymnast.”
Biles defended her husband, replying, "You know what, he might. Because the other day I said, ‘You know what, in a couple of years nobody is going to call him Simone Biles’ husband. They’ll call me Jonathan Owens’ wife."
After the episode went viral, Owens posted a photo from their May 2023 destination wedding to Instagram with the caption, “Unbothered 😂❤️ Just know we locked in over here 🤞🏽.”
In the comments, Biles added, "for life.”
Cover Story
Thanks to a global pandemic, the greatest gymnast in history was forced to spend part of the last year finding some equilibrium in a life that had previously been all about the work. “I lived, I traveled, I did things I couldn’t do because of gymnastics,” she says. Now, as she prepares for the 2021 Olympics—maybe her last (\!\!\!)—the 24-year-old is approaching her sport with a new sense of joy.
Originally Appeared on Glamour
