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Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit, has shut down rumors of a split with wife Serena Williams after a worried fan noticed the couple had stopped following one other on Instagram. The worried fan wanted to know why Serena unfollowed him and if their breakup was imminent, prompting Alexis to address his concerns. But Alexis quickly reassured the devotee that everything was OK between them.
According to media reports, Serena Williams was in a “funk” last week because she believed she was not spending enough time with her 11-month-old baby due to her demanding work schedule. A social media post made this information public from the 23-time grand slam winner.
Husband Richard Williams has expressed that he “couldn’t be more pleased” with Wimbledon runner-up Serena Williams.
The American mother of two, 36, gave birth to her daughter Olympia in September, but she nearly died from problems like blood clots in her lungs.
Although she was bedridden for weeks after surgery and had to cancel several tournaments, Williams has returned to the tennis court.
Intriguing facts regarding Serena Williams and Alexis Ohanian’s union
For this pair, it did not take more than a few seconds to realize there was nothing special about each other. They happened to cross paths in Rome’s Cavalieri hotel back in May of 2015. Ohanian disregarded the empty tables around them and sat down at the one next to the tennis superstar while she and her companions lounged poolside eating breakfast.
We were trying to encourage him to move and get out of there,” Williams told Vanity Fair in 2017. When the group realized that he was trying to go too near to her, they informed him there was a rat under his table. Williams remembered, “He kind of rejects and he looks at us.” “Is there a rat in here?’ he asks. Also, “I’m from Brooklyn,” he said. All the time, I see rats.
Serena Williams’ father Richard to face mental evaluation after he failed to give ‘coherent answers’ in deposition amid his bitter divorce battle https://t.co/fPdy1zPJDo pic.twitter.com/V4AtHeyEoO
— Linda Ikeji (@lindaikeji) July 18, 2018
I was surprised to hear that. Asked Williams. The man answered, “No,” to my question.
Williams, intrigued by Ohanian’s apparent lack of effort, extended an invitation for him to join her and her companions at the table. …and the rest, as they say, is history.
Concealed dating
When their relationship first began to grow, Williams and Ohanian kept their relationship extremely covert. Before making their engagement public in December 2016, the pair had been dating in secrecy for about 15 months. Though the tech executive occasionally teased their relationship on social media, Williams didn’t see him in her feed until well over a year after they first met. In August of 2016, she posted a group shot of her pals and jokingly referred to her partner in the group as “the geek.”
Throughout that first year, reports persisted that Williams was seeing other people, specifically rappers Drake and Common. Ohanian recently ended a five-year engagement with the scientist Sabriya Stukes, whom he had met during his time at university. The adorable couple was so successful at keeping their romance under wraps that the only report linking them together at lunch appeared in October 2015.
Dreadful Pregnancy Reveals
Williams famously published (and then deleted) a Snapchat selfie in April 2017 that confirmed her first pregnancy. She marked the shot, which showed her growing baby belly, “20 weeks.” The news of their pregnancy astonished fans, but the engaged couple was even more shocked.
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Williams took a pregnancy test the week before the Australian Open in January of that year because she felt strange. In her recollection of Vanity Fair, the outcomes were promising. Upon hearing that, “[I] took a double take,” she admitted. And my stomach sank. In a literal sense, it crashed. I can’t believe it, but I have a competition to compete in. I’m worried about how I’ll fare at the Australian Open. I intended to win Wimbledon this year.
The tennis pro was still in denial, so she did five more tests, all of which came back positive. Williams just handed Ohanian a paper bag containing all six positive pregnancy tests when he traveled into Melbourne to meet her. Williams was about eight weeks pregnant when she memorably won her 23rd Grand Slam singles title.
Nobody was familiar with the other’s canon
Although both Williams and Ohanian are at the top of their domains, they entered their first meeting with no prior knowledge of the other’s accomplishments. Ohanian told Vanity Fair that he was “98 percent convinced” he had spoken to Serena Williams during their initial discussion, even though he had no interest in tennis. I’ve never seen a live or televised match, he admitted. To paraphrase, “it was the sport itself;” even while ESPN was providing tennis updates, I would tune out. I truly didn’t appreciate tennis as a sport.
Williams, similarly, had no idea what Reddit was. She tried to impress the site’s creator by saying she had just visited the site that morning, but she almost got caught in a white lie. Oh, you weren’t? Explain what makes it so appealing to you. Ohanian was the one who posed the question. With a “Wellllll…” she’d responded. Lucky for the tennis pro, her buddies intervened soon.
Ohanian ended up going to see Williams play at the 2015 Italian Open. “It seems that I have finally become a tennis enthusiast. He tagged a photo of her playing basketball with the hashtag “#priime” on Instagram.
In a dash toward love
A few weeks after their initial meeting, Williams and Ohanian went on their first date. The tennis star invited her new flame to spend the weekend with her in Paris, the city of love, as she prepared to compete in the 2015 French Open, which she went on to win.
Ohanian accepted the invitation but said he did not have any high hopes for the trip. His first thoughts, as he told Vanity Fair, were: “Even if she blows me off and we don’t even hang out, I’m still going to have a wonderful time in Paris, and I’ll have an even better narrative for all my childhood buddies when I was like, ‘Yeah, I went to Paris for a weekend. I was going to meet Serena Williams there, but she canceled on me. Luckily, I went with some other friends, and we had a blast.
The couple-to-be hit it off during their six hours of aimless wandering through the city. Ohanian, a seasoned traveler, guided his date as they explored Paris, stopping at the Eiffel Tower, the zoo, and a variety of boutiques.
Ohanian proposed to Williams before they had even been dating a year. He later told Vanity Fair, “I felt like a door had been opened to a guy who made me want to be my greatest self.” He had a picture-perfect proposal in mind: Williams was flown out to Rome, where he laid a path of rose petals going to the place where they had first met (complete with a plastic rat on the hotel table.)
Williams, being Williams, naturally announced on the social networking site Reddit. She posted a picture of herself and her fiance as Snoop (the website’s space alien mascot), with the caption “Future Mrs. Kn0thing,” a play on his moniker.
She also wrote a lovely poem about the proposal: “I came home a little late / Someone had a bag packed for me / And a carriage awaited / Destination: Rome / To escort me to my very own ‘charming’ / Back to where our stars first collided / And now it was full circle / At the same table we first met by chance / This time he made it not by chance / But by choice / Down on one
And you made me the happiest man on earth,” Ohanian retorted. We need to go cry in private for a moment.
Amid shared health struggles,
Williams’s frightening postpartum health issues began after the September 2017 birth of their daughter Alexis Olympia. Ohanian performed the emergency C-section when her heart rate dropped dangerously low during labor. He then placed their newborn daughter on her chest after he cut the umbilical cord. She shared this story with Vogue in January of the following year. “It was a fantastic sensation,” she exclaimed. Then, “everything went to hell.”
Williams’s C-section wound opened up during a severe coughing fit, and she had trouble breathing for the next week as a result of small blood clots in her lungs. Her doctors discovered a massive hematoma that had inundated her abdomen during the procedure to seal the wound. She rested for a full six weeks at home after the surgery. Ohanian stated, “I was thrilled to change diapers.” However, “not being able to help made it even tougher than everything else she was going through.”
Williams’ difficult pregnancy and delivery motivated her to promote health care globally. “My personal experience was not fantastic, but it was MY experience, and I’m happy it occurred to me,” she wrote on Facebook. Strengthened me, I said.
How Marvelous of you!
Ohanian rented out an entire theatre to show Thor: Ragnarok to his future in-laws the night before the wedding. The pleased parent posted a video of his son watching “Thor: Ragnarok” on Instagram and captioned it, “Junior’s first movie.” In addition, he said, “Mom needed a day off to relax. As much as she loved Baldur, she was looking forward to Ragnarok so that she might reunite with Thor, her other man. Soon after, he, Williams, and Alexis Olympia were shown snuggling in front of the television.
Ohanian promises his daughter, “We’re going to protect your eyes for all the horrific parts.” And Williams says, “And she has earmuffs on,” so that the baby is shielded from the comic book movie’s bloody sights and explosions. Ohanian says, “Safety first,” and then jokes, “Even though Thor is your mother’s, another man. It’s fine; he just isn’t very tall.
At the end of the clip, Williams can be seen fast asleep with her head propped up on Ohanian’s shoulder. As he annotated this scene, he wrote, “Of course, mama fell asleep.” This is just too cute.
One could say that they have a serious Disney obsession.
Williams and Ohanian got married in New Orleans in November 2017, after being engaged for nearly a year, and their ceremony was a far cry from the norm. The couple eschewed the traditional route and instead celebrated their union with a Disney-themed party. Stars including Beyoncé, Eva Longoria, and Ciara attended the wedding, which had a mystical Beauty and the Beast theme. An Entertainment Tonight insider said that attendees “were urged to dress to the theme” and were greeted with the song “Be Our Guest.”
Williams said to Vogue that she wanted her wedding to be “as non-traditional as possible.” They exchanged heartfelt, handwritten vows as she shimmered in an Alexander McQueen gown and he looked dapper in an Armani suit. He gushed to his stunning bride, “You are the greatest of all time, not only in sport.” It’s from the perspective of a mom and a wife. My heart leaps at the thought of adding many more pages to our fairy tale together. And I’ve been waiting for this moment my entire life without even knowing it… Thank you so much, and I love you so much.
The newlyweds danced to “Tale as Old as Time” and “If I Can’t Have You” after the Disney-themed wedding was changed into a modern ball. Oh, and at the reception, Ginuwine’s “Pony” played in the background as New Edition stunned everyone with a performance, and then Ohanian shocked his wife with an all-white carousel. Not a big deal.
Advertisements on four billboards in the desert outside Indian Wells, California.
Ohanian enjoys shocking his wife with extravagant displays of affection, but this may be his most impressive surprise yet.
The entrepreneurial guru created and erected four billboards in February 2018 to cheer on Williams as she prepared for her long-awaited return to tennis after giving a baby. A few others thought it was a reference to the award-winning picture Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, which came out around the same time. Ohanian tweeted a picture of his handiwork.
The adorable twins Alexis Olympia and Serena Williams were featured on multiple billboards, each of which proclaimed their mother to be the “Greatest Momma of All Time” (or “G.M.O.A.T.”). He captioned the image, “These just went up on alongside I-10 into Palm Springs.” The return of Olympia Ohanian to tennis was something that both of us wanted to celebrate. I came up with the concept and the design, with some help from Junior. #GMOAT.
Williams returned to action just a few days later, claiming victory at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, California. She won the first-round match against Zarina Diyas of Kazakhstan with the support of her affluent family.
Aspirations in a Relationship
The relationship between Serena Williams and Alexis Ohanian has its ups and downs, but in the end, it’s evident that these two are the definition of #RelationshipGoals. The couple frequently posts pictures of themselves together on Instagram, Facebook, and other social media sites, where their followers may enjoy their shared sense of humor, cuteness, and emotional chemistry. We love the ones where they play with flower effects, dance to New Edition, pose for their first official family portrait, and share a sweet moment on their wedding day.
We challenge the audience not to let out an audible “aww” every time Williams talks about her spouse. For me, he is the foundation of my life and the center of my affection. At the year’s end, she gushed, “I am so blessed to have discovered this lovely man that treats me better than a queen,” on Instagram. In the words of Alexis, “I love you, you make me thrilled to get up every morning knowing I’ll get to see you.”
Just look at how cute this family is!
