If you think you know what a fairy-tale romance is, prepare to have your world rocked by Serena Williams and Alexis Ohanian’s whirlwind love story. These two met in Rome (!), went on their first date in Paris (!!), and most recently announced Serena’s second pregnancy on the steps of the Met Gala (!!!). Like, they are the literal definition of a power couple.
Although Serena’s immense popularity is obvious, we’ve gotten glimpses here and there of her other half over the years. Mostly because the tennis pro is anything but shy about the positive impact her husband has had on her: “I learned that love is an amazing feeling, and if you have an opportunity to feel it, then it’s a special thing,” she gushed during a Q&A with Bumble.
Keep scrolling for what to know about Alexis, from the tech company he cofounded that you may or may not have heard of (hint: you have) to some of his most supportive husband moments.
Serena’s husband Alexis was born in New York City
More specifically, Brooklyn in the year 1983 to a German mother and a father whose parents sadly needed to flee during the Armenian genocide. The tech mogul’s family background greatly informed how he grew up and helped shape his drive.
“I have a bit of a crush on the Statue of Liberty...I look at that every day and keep in perspective—coming from a family of immigrants—everything they went through to give me the good fortune I’ve had,” he confessed during an interview with the Financial Times.
According to a feature in Inc. magazine, later on in his adolescence, Alexis’s parents relocated to the suburbs of Washington, D.C., where the entrepreneur graduated from Howard High School in 2001 and became increasingly interested in technology. “I went to high school in Ellicott City, Maryland, and I felt pretty ambivalent about the whole thing. It just took time away from my doing things on the internet....In school, I was just a kid. Online, I had authority. My parents were cool with it, although I guess they didn’t know I was e-mailing total strangers,” he recalled in the 2012 profile.
Alexis then went to on to attend the University of Virginia, where he graduated in 2005 with degrees in history and commerce. It was during his undergraduate days that he met Steve Huffman—more specifically, on the first day of his freshman year—and bonded with him over video games, which brings us to the fact that....
He co-founded Reddit
Yep, Alexis and Steve built Reddit in a whopping three weeks, which is as much time as I, a Perpetually Indecisive Libra™️, need to make a firm decision about pretty much anything. Sixteen months later in 2006, the duo reportedly sold the company to Condé Nast for an estimated $10 to $20 million, although Alexis still remained on the company’s board of directors. Fast-forward to 2015 after Reddit became independent once more, and the entrepreneur returned to briefly run the company with Steve full-time until 2018, when he stepped back to focus more on investing.
Oh, and in the wake of his departure, he *also* just so happened to pen the book, Without Their Permission: How the 21st Century Will Be Made, Not Managed. Like, what can’t this man do?
Without Their Permission: The Story of Reddit and a Blueprint for How to Change the World
Without Their Permission: The Story of Reddit and a Blueprint for How to Change the World
Serena and Alexis had an iconic meet-cute
Once upon a time back in May 2015, Alexis and world-famous athlete Serena Williams were both staying at the Rome Cavalieri, in, well, Rome. The tennis player was there for the Italian Open at the time, while the tech mogul planned on attending the Festival of Media Global conference. Serena was meant to have her own table of four in addition to an adjoining table at the pool area on the morning of day one of her tournament, and Alexis unknowingly sat at the extra table. Now, we’ll leave it to Serena to tell you what happened next: “This big guy comes and he just plops down at the table next to us, and I’m like, ‘Huh! All these tables and he’s sitting here?’”
The tennis pro and her party then tried to get Alexis to move to one of the other empty tables and even told him that there was a rat by him. According to Serena, their convo went as follows:
“No, we just don’t want you sitting there. We’re going to use that table,” she said.
“I’m from Brooklyn. I see rats all the time,” Alexis replied.
“Oh, you’re not afraid of rats?”
“No.”
And the rest is history!
Serena invited her would-be husband to sit with her party—on top of yet another invite to watch her play at the Italian Open *and* meet her in Paris for the French Open. And then at the end of 2016, Alexis proposed at the VERY SAME HOTEL where they met in Rome!
If your tear ducts aren’t working overtime just yet, here’s a picture that Alexis posted of Serena during her first match in the Italian Open that will make you believe it was love at first sight:
They have two kids together
In September 2017, the couple welcomed Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr., and the two married the following month in New Orleans.
Fast-forward to early 2023, and the duo made a second pregnancy announcement in the most iconic way possible: at the freakin’ Met Gala! On the red carpet at the lavish fundraiser, Serena told the Vogue livestream, “There’s three of us here,” which was a not-so-subtle nod to the couple’s new bb 🥺❤️. Watch the vid in full here:
...And he revealed their second baby's sex in *such* an epic way
As of August 2023, Alexis and Serena are expecting their second child. The couple announced the baby's sex in the most epic way—ahem, a flying drone, anyone? In a video uploaded to Serena's YouTube channel, we see the athlete as she prepares for her "baby shower/gender reveal."
Instead of opting for a blue or pink cake (because, let's be real, what's so exciting about that?), Alexis played a prank on Serena with a yellow cake.
"I'm doing this because I want to troll her and [daughter] Olympia into thinking that this is the reveal of Jelly Bean," the Reddit co-founder whispered into the camera, referring to the nickname they've given their unborn child. "She will cut into this cake and probably be disappointed and hopefully appreciate my troll. But, we'll see. I don't know if she's gonna be a professional about it. She might see this cake come out, roll her eyes, and say, ‘This guy had one job and he gave me a goddamn cake gender reveal.’ But we'll see. there's a reveal after the reveal."
As Serena cut the cake, she laughed and smushed it in Alexis' face. "We are actually going to reveal Jelly Bean’s sex. The way we’re going to do it, though, is with a little style and some spectacular lights," he said before drones lit up the sky to reveal they're expecting a baby girl.
A reveal as epic as Serena's tennis stats? Yes, pls.
Alexis is an advocate for paternity leave
After he took a full 16 weeks off following the birth of his first daughter with Serena, Alexis began advocating for federal paid family leave legislation. “I hope to be meeting with many senators, representatives, plenty of dads, on both sides of the aisle, in both houses of the legislature, who want this to be the law of the land,” he told Good Morning America in June 2019. “What we are looking for is some minimum number of weeks of leave.”
A year later in 2020, he opened up about an even more personal experience that inspired him to want to champion paternal leave: the fact that Serena nearly died during childbirth. “The understanding of my responsibility to care for my family that I gained during those first months after Olympia’s birth has never left me, and it gives purpose to my fatherhood today,” he confessed in an op-ed in the New York Times.
He’s *the* most supportive of Serena
Like, after the tennis pro announced that she would be retiring from tennis to focus on her family and business ventures, Alexis shared in a tweet, “I’m so happy she wrote that piece. It came out so well and I have a feeling she’s going to be hearing about it for years to come from folks.”
The entrepreneur also took time to gush about his wife and the lasting impact she’s made on the world. “I’ve seen over the last 7 years how much y’all love my wife—what she means to so many, worldwide. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” he mused. “Plenty of folks have told me ‘how Reddit changed their life,’ but the scale & impact of ‘how Serena changed my life’ stories absolutely dwarfs it.”
Oh, and in 2021 he was quoted as saying the *chef’s kiss* line: “I’ll be a self-made billionaire one day and most people will still know me as Serena’s husband (or Olympia’s dad) and that’s fine by me.” ❤️
Gretty Garcia is the assistant news editor at Cosmopolitan, where she covers all things news, entertainment, and pop culture. Before joining Cosmo, Gretty was a social strategist for Mrs. Dow Jones and a features and special projects editor at Editorialist. She holds an MS from the Columbia Journalism School and studied art history at Harvard College.
