Olympics 2026: Meet the Athlete Couples Competing at the Winter Game

Jocelyn Peterman & Brett Gallant

Partners in life and mixed doubles curling for Team Canada, the reigning world champions are hoping to add an Olympic medal to their considerable career haul.

Their fruitful relationship started in 2016 when Brett was looking for a partner and he sent Jocelyn a Facebook message "strictly about curling ability," he recalled to CBC Sports in 2019. According to her, however, "There was flirting."

They met in person just a few days before the national championship in Saskatoon—and they won.

"We clicked immediately," Brett said. "From a curling and friendship standpoint. That was a good thing. We're wired the same. We're competitive."

The romantic standpoint soon followed and they were engaged when they made their Olympics debut—on the men's and women's teams, respectively—in 2022.

Brett left Beijing with a bronze medal. He and Jocelyn tied the knot that June, welcomed son Luke in 2023 and will finally be competing together in mixed doubles at the 2026 Olympics. Fiancée

Luke "tells everyone that he's going to the Olympics," Jocelyn told Olympics.com. "But I don't think he realizes how cool it is or how unique it is."

But she and her husband get it. "Jocelyn and I have been motivated to get to the Olympics and to compete on the biggest stage for a long time now," Brett said. Added Jocelyn, "We take so much pride and are so grateful for every opportunity that we get to compete together and have it be kind of a family thing."

Kim Meylemans & Nicole Silveira

The rival skeleton racers—Kim represents Belgium and Nicole is from Brazil—went public with their relationship two months before the 2022 Beijing Olympics, where they finished 18th and 13th, respectively.

More recently, Kim took silver and Nicole scored bronze at the 2025 St. Moritz World Cup.

"I think it's easier than having someone at home that you miss all the time," Kim, 29, said of competing against her then-fiancée in a 2024 interview with the International Bobsleigh & Skeleton Foundation. "So, at least we get to do everything together and have fun with it."

But, suffice it to say, both hate to lose. When Nicole popped the question in the summer of 2024 during a private boat tour in Brazil, Kim—who had bought her future wife the same ring—was annoyed that Nicole beat her to it.

"I won that competition," Nicole quipped.

While they're still planning a big beach wedding for the end of 2026, they legally wed Jan. 8, 2025, in a civil ceremony in Calgary, where Nicole works as a nurse.

"We really love heading into this huge season and possibly last olympic games, as spouses and by that a whole new level of commitment to each other," they wrote in a joint Instagram post. "No matter what curve balls this year and the challenges ahead will throw at us, our love comes first."

And not least, they continued, "it feels extra special to potentially compete as [a] married couple and shine a light on marriage equality while doing so."

Emily Sweeney & Dominik Fischnaller

Speed is the name of the game in luge, and Emily and Dominik planned a wedding in nine days after the athletes secured the proper permits to tie the knot in his native Italy in May 2025.

However, they didn't race to the altar by any means, having first coupled up 15 years beforehand as teenagers on the international circuit. Returning to the Olympics—his fourth and her third—as a married couple, Emily told the Associated Press, "It just feels like we're setting up a future instead of just living in the present."

And Dominik, who took the bronze in men's luge in Beijing, doesn’t want to rock the sled.

Though Emily returned to competition nine months later, Dominik was traumatized when she suffered neck and back fractures in a crash during the Pyeongchang Olympics in 2018.

“I tell her she can’t get hurt because I feel the pain even 10,000 times more than she feels her own pain,” Dominik told the AP in 2026. “I’m extremely nervous when she’s sliding. I almost can’t watch the race.”

But they'll both be watching and cheering each other on as they hurdle down the track at the Cortina Sliding Center during what may be their final Olympics.

"We’re here. We’re happy,” Dominik said. “And we’re having a good life.

Brittany Bowe & Hilary Knight

The U.S. women's hockey team captain and veteran speed skater have a particularly special relationship with the Olympics, having gone on their first date during the 2022 Beijing Games.  

“Hilary and I have known each other for a number of years through different Team USA events…but that's the first time we really did have time to connect and get to know one another, " Brittany, 37, told People in January. "Hilary would ask, ‘Oh, do you want to go for a walk after dinner?'"

Their "fully masked" walks weren't "romantic at all," Hilary, 36, told NBC Olympics. "But it was cute."

Brittany explained, "We didn't have the family, the friends, no outside distractions," the veteran speed skater continued. "And we really had a lot of time just to get to know each other.”

She took bronze in the 10,000 meters, but leaving with a girlfriend was “the biggest win coming out of Beijing for sure."

The couple's home base is now Salt Lake City, where their off-ice hobbies include pickleball and gardening. While Hilary, a star forward for the Seattle Torrent, isn't retiring from hockey, her fifth Olympics will be her last, and Brittany—the oldest member of the U.S. speedskating team—is hanging up her blades as a four-time Olympian.

"In the sports world, I’m like the old lady now,” Brittany told NBC Olympics. “I have been so blessed to have such a long, successful career, and for me, it’s just time. I’m excited for what life will look like next."

Madison Chock & Evan Bates

After winning figure skating team gold in 2022, ice dancers Madison and Evan are still seeking their first Olympic medal as a pair heading into their fourth Winter Games.

And while the three-time world champions haven't said whether or not Milan Cortina will be their final Olympics, they're soaking up every moment.

"We're working hard and been putting in the hours and putting in the work,” Evan, 36, told E! News in December, "but we're so grateful for each day and for the opportunity.”

He and Madison first teamed up in 2011 and, after five years, Evan told Olympics.com in 2021, "Eventually I was just like…'I love you. You know, I have feelings for you. I would love to be more than skating partners,'".

The feeling was mutual and, after letting their romance cook for another decade, they tied the knot in June 2024.

“I think it just really solidified our commitment to each other and our commitment to our craft,” Madison, 33, told E!. “We already had such a deep understanding and bond through skating, but since we've been married, I really feel like we just take everything on as partners and champion each other on and off the ice in whatever endeavor we're pursuing.”

Kaysha Love & Hunter Powell

Kaysha was a sprinter at UNLV when a bobsled coach invited her to a 2020 training camp in Lake Placid.

“I had spent eight years doing this sport that I felt like was part of my purpose, and then for him to tell me that I need to try a sport that I'd only known from Cool Runnings, I was hesitant at first," the 28-year-old told Bustle in January. But, "he was saying how the Olympics are coming up in a year and a half. And that's what I had been chasing my whole athletic career.”

She both qualified for the Beijing Games in 2022 and got Colorado State decathlon star Hunter Powell to try a bobsled on for size. He turned out to be a perfect fit in more ways than one.

“For me, it’s a secret weapon, to have a teammate that you know only has trust and belief in you," Kaysha told the AP. "When I know that I am supported, I just feel like I’m able to do unthinkable things.”

Hunter, who proposed in July, said on Colorado State Rams Live that "words can't describe" how he feels about being an Olympian. But "even more special," he noted, "is I've gotten to travel the world with the woman I love, and we're both living the dream that we set out to achieve."

After the Olympics, they're getting a dog—"a giant schnauzer," Kaysha told Bustle—and tying the knot Sept. 3.

"Honestly, I've been using wedding planning as a mental distraction on some of the training days," she said. "So, we have actually planned like 90 percent of our wedding. We're really excited."

Charlene Guignard & Marco Fabbri

The Italian ice dancers have been competing together as a romantic couple for 15 years.

"It would be still very nice, of course, to achieve what we achieved separately," Marco told Olympics.com in November 2024. "But since we achieved what we achieved together, it's even better because you are sharing very strong feelings and very strong emotions with the person you love, with the person you've decided to spend your life with."

Noted Charlene, "It's a lot of sacrifice. All skaters start very, very young…so it's a lifestyle and not every day is easy. You have to be passionate and very strong, mentally and physically."

But contrary to how it sounds, the pair don't live and breathe ice dancing.

They're based in Milan, making their fourth Olympics extra convenient, but visitors to their apartment wouldn't know from the look of it that champion figure skaters live there.

"We are keeping the medals in a special box," Marco said, noting there's nothing on display at all. "We have no pictures. We don't want to see everything about our career in our apartment because I think it's also important to separate the figure skating and the private life. And this is probably the secret [of] why we are still here and we are still fighting, and we are still together."

Off the ice, "another life starts," he explained. "Even the fact of just eating together, cooking something together or going to the cinema together. It's completely different…We can say that we have a two-sided relationship."

Marie-Philip Poulin & Laura Stacey

The Canadian hockey stars first clicked in 2017 at a national team event when they both looked up and saw a shooting star, then locked eyes, realizing they were the only two who had just shared that moment.

"You should have seen the skyline the weekend of our wedding," Poulin told CBC Sports in November 2024. "It was so bright and magical. Stars everywhere. I believe in those little signs."

But they were on and off at first, Canada's crushing silver finish during the 2018 Olympics leaving team leader Poulin feeling as if she'd let her whole country down.

"I didn't want to see anybody," the 34-year-old center recalled, "and I was just really on my own.”

Stacey remembered, "We just stopped talking. I was not talking to her. I was good and ready to move on."

But when Poulin's Montreal Canadiennes played Stacey's Markham Thunder that fall, they reconnected over dinner. And, incidentally, won gold at the 2022 Olympics.

Milan Cortina will be Stacey's third Olympics and Poulin's fifth—and their first since tying the knot in September 2024.

“She puts up that front of, ‘I'm the hockey player’. That's all people see and have seen of her,” Stacey said of her wife. “The world knows her as the best hockey player in the world, but they don't know her as the best person in the world as well."