Simone Biles' Husband Sparks Outrage: 'Disrespectful'

Simone Biles is trending online after her husband revealed in an interview that he had no idea who she was when they met—and people are incredibly unimpressed.

Biles, the most decorated gymnast in history and widely considered the greatest of all time, is married to Green Bay Packers safety Jonathan Owens. The pair started dating in 2020 after they met on the celebrity dating app Raya.

On a recent appearance on The Pivot Podcast, Owens revealed he had never paid attention to gymnastics and when Biles made the first move, he had never heard of the four-time Olympic gold medalist before.

Angering people even further, when host Ryan Clark asked Owens if he considered himself "the catch" in their relationship, Owens quickly agreed that he did. He revealed he had also been "afraid to commit."

"Literally had been on the app for a couple of days, man, and it's like she pops up and, I'm like 'Let me see who this is.' I had never really paid attention to gymnastics, so it piqued my curiosity," he said.

"I go do my workout, and I come back and I had some likes on my Instagram. I still waited and then I come back to my phone, and then she messaged me on the app like, 'Hey.'"

He added: "I didn't know who she was at the time, but the first thing that I saw was that she just had a bunch of followers so in my mind, I'm like, 'OK, she got to be good.'"

While it may seem impossible for Owens to have never even heard of Biles, he claimed that while she was collecting medals at the Rio Olympics in 2016, he didn't have access to networks that aired the games. He said: "When she won the Olympics, I was in college and we didn't have NBC, we didn't have Olympics channels and we're in camp. So I'm not paying attention to, I never would have had a moment to where I would have watched."

People online weren't happy with Owens' reasoning, with many taking to X to slam him for being disrespectful to his wife.

Newsweek reached out to a representative for Biles via email and contacted Owens via social media for comment on Friday.

"How utterly stupid & disrespectful. He should have kept all of that BS to himself. Damn, no one would know who he is if it wasn't for Simone Biles. What man who is truly in love with a woman would try to diminish her in public or private. Simone needs to reassess this marriage," one person posted.

"Simone Biles is trending because even as her husband is getting dragged, nobody knows his name," another X user wrote.

"The man is delusional. Don't nobody know him except as #SimoneBiles husband. Let the dragging begin!" a third person wrote.

A fourth added: "Mind you he went undrafted, was waived by two teams, hasn't won a single championship and is all around a below average player so what in his mind would make him think HE is the catch?!"

However, not everyone has been vilifying the football player, as some people online have come to his defense.

"Idk [I don't know] who dude is. But I know nothing about the Packers either. But he ain't disrespect her at all. The interviewer boosted it into something else that it wasn't," one X user wrote.

"I really think folks are overreacting about Simone Biles's husband, Jonathan Owen's interview. I think y'all are used to people fabricating their 'How I Met Your Mother' stories and when someone just keeps it as is, people think it's disrespectful," said another.

"'We're mad cause a professional football player said he was in training camp and didn't have time to watch the Olympics!!!'" a third wrote, quoting the public reaction alongside a gif that asks: "What is wrong with you?"

Elsewhere in the interview, Owens said the first moment he realized how famous Biles is, was when people were left starstruck by the Olympian when the couple were out getting ice cream.

He explained: "It was all these moms and they're there with their kids and we walked past and everybody stopped and just [stared]. Kids were just shaking, like, 'Oh, my God.'"

Owens was drafted into the NFL in 2018 and met Biles two years into his pro career. This year, Owens proposed to Biles on Valentine's Day. After marrying in a private city hall ceremony in Texas in April, Biles and Owens tied the knot for a second time in Mexico in May in an intimate ceremony with 144 guests.

This is Owens' first season with Green Bay after spending the last four seasons with the Houston Texans.