Love is in the air… and the rings

By: Kaitlyn Belile, Features Editor 

As many of you know, the 2026 Olympic Winter Games began on Feb. 6 in Milano Cortina. Now with Valentine’s Day approaching, I figured that there was no better time than now to talk about all of the couples competing in both the Olympics and the Paralympics. There are currently at least 13 couples competing in the Games. 

Of these couples, 10 are playing for the same country, and three of them are competing against each other. Only one couple is not competing in the same event, however, they are both doing ice sports. 

Two of the couples are competing in mixed doubles curling. Representing team Norway is the married couple, Kristin Skaslien and Magnus Nedregotten, and this couple is notoriously known for their standoffishness while competing. The couple met in 2011, and a year later became a team. Another married couple competing in mixed doubles curling are Jocelyn Peterman and Brett Gallant representing Team Canada. Peterman and Gallant met because he wanted her to be his partner in 2016. Being back in Italy is incredibly special for the couple because that was their honeymoon destination! 

Two of the competing couples are doing women’s ice hockey (which, if you know me, is my favorite sport). One of the couples is Ronja Savolainen and Anna Kjellbin, who are on rival teams. Savolainen plays for Finland while Kjellbin plays for Sweden, and the two countries have been rivals since their first match in 1928. The couple is engaged and they are the world’s real life “Heated Rivalry” (which, again, if you know me, you know that I LOVE that show… see the first edition of this semester to see my review). Both of the women are also in the PWHL and on different teams. In an interview with the Ottawa Citizen, Savolainen said “When you play, you just play. You don’t really think about who’s there. You’re friends after. On the ice, she’s my enemy. That’s how it goes.” The other married couple currently playing women’s ice hockey in the Olympics is Marie-Philip Poulin and Laura Stacey. Poulin is the captain of Team Canada and the captain of the Montreal Victoire in the PWHL, and Stacey is a member of both of the teams as well. The couple got married in 2024 and are an unstoppable force together. 

Two of the couples competing are doing luge (which I had not heard of before the Olympics). One of the couples are solo lugers Emily Sweeney and Dominik Fischnaller. Sweeney is competing for Team USA and Fischnaller is competing for Italy. The couple is now married and met when they were teenagers back in 2009 at a luge competition. The other couple that is competing in luge is Martin Bots, who is a double luger, and Elina Ieva Bota who is a single luger. They are both competing for Latvia, and have been competing for the Latvian luge team since 2011. They got married in 2024 and are the only married couple at the Olympics representing Latvia. 

One of the couples is doing freestyle skiing mix team aerials competing for team USA. Ashley Caldwell and Justin Schoenefeld are a couple that got married on top of a mountain! The couple met in 2018, began dating in 2019 and got married in 2025. 

One of the couples is doing skeleton racing (which is another sport I did not hear of before the Olympics). Kim Meylemans is competing for Belgium and Nicole Silveira is competing for Brazil. The two met in 2019 and then got married in 2025. They have to compete against each other but Meylemans told TODAY, “it’s a bit non-realistic to think that we’re actually enemies.” 

One of the couples is competing for Team USA, but for different sports. Brittany Bowe is a speed skater and Hilary Knight is the captain of the women’s hockey team in the Olympics and the captain of the PWHL team, the Seattle Torrent. The two met during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and the pair would take walks around the Olympic Village – masked of course. 

One of the couples is doing figure skating (which I have been watching a lot of), and they are the ice dance pair, Madison Chock and Evan Bates, competing for Team USA. Chock and Bates met when they were 12 when Chock moved to Bates’ hometown in Ann Arbor, Mich. and they went to the same rink to practice. They became partners in 2011 and started dating around 2017. The couple officially got married in 2024. 

One of the couples is doing bobsled and also competing for Team USA. Kaysha Love is currently competing in women’s monobob and will be competing in 2-woman bobsleigh with Azaria Hill. Her fiancee is Hunter Powell, who competes in the four-man sled with Carsten Vissering, Caleb Furnell and is led by Kris Horn. The engaged couple met as track and field teammates when they were students at the University of Nevada. Love convinced Powell to try out bobsledding and now they are Olympians! 

One of the couples is a part of the figure skating team and they compete in the ice dance team event. Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri are competing for Team Italy. The pair started dating in 2009 and became skating partners in 2010. They actually met on a website called Ice Partner Search and Fabbri asked Guignard to be his partner. She accepted and then three days later, they were an ice dance team! 

The last couple I will talk about is in the Paralympics competing in Nordic skiing for Team USA. Aaron Pike and Oksana Masters have both qualified for every Paralympic Games since 2012 during the winter and summer games. A quick fun fact about Masters is that her adopted mother was a professor at the University at Buffalo! Masters had an incredibly difficult upbringing (she is an incredible athlete and everyone should look her up and see how much she has overcome!). She is also the most decorated U.S. Winter Paralympian and Pike is a nine-time world champion medalist, according to Women’s Health magazine. Masters and Pike met in 2013 but started daring in 2014 after the Sochi Paralympics. The two got engaged in 2022. 

This Olympic season is full of life and full of love.