Indianapolis Colts star Jonathan Owens reacted to being called “Mr. Biles,” after he previously stirred controversy for comments made about his wife, Olympic legend Simone Biles.
“I take it as respect,” Owens, 31, told The Athletic in a story published on Tuesday, September 22. “You see who my wife is. Says a lot about me as well. Like, my confidence, and who I am as a person that she chose to be with me. It’s respect, because as a man in this field, [one of the] things they judge you on is who is your significant other. That says a lot about your confidence.”
Owens ruffled some feathers during an appearance on “The Pivot Podcast” in December 2023, eight months after he and Biles, 29, got married, when he said “the men” are the catch in relationships and that he didn’t even know who Biles was when they started dating.
“I didn’t have my notifications on, and Simone was like, ‘Have you been on your Instagram?’” Owens recalled to The Athletic. “That was my first time of really, really being in the public eye and people trying to hate on you — ‘Oh, you’re Mr. Biles!’ — and stuff like that. But that’s what comes with it. You take the good with the bad, and at the end of the day, I’m living my dream.”
Owens and Biles matched on a dating app in March 2020, which turned out to be a serendipitous blessing in disguise right at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s like the world shut down and we literally were able to hang out all the time. It was meant to be,” Owens said. “I was single for a time. I kinda was tired of it. I thought it was for me … and then you still feel empty. You’re missing something, and I didn’t know what it was until I did find my wife.”
Owens even credited Biles with his NFL career getting to another level. (Owens signed with the Colts in March, after previous stints with the Chicago Bears, Green Bay Packers and Houston Texans.)
“Because I’m locked in on one person,” he explained. “And that was when I felt like I truly found myself and my career took the next step.”
Still, Owens admitted that all of the attention thrust upon his personal life was “tough at first because I’m a pretty quiet, private person.”
“It almost makes you a shell of yourself, at first, because of all the criticism,” he said. “They’ve got something to say about everything you do. But just my wife helping me get to a point of just [understanding] they’re going to talk s*** either way it goes. So you might as well live your life how you want to.”
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