The Weight of the Spotlight: Why Simone Biles and Jonathan Owens Keep Facing Public Scrutiny
When Simone Biles and Jonathan Owens stepped onto the red carpet at the 2026 ESPY Awards in New York City, they expected the night to be about celebration. Biles, the most decorated gymnast in Olympic history, wore a custom champagne-colored gown with a strapless corseted bodice and a high-low skirt, paired with Le Silla shoes and Spoiled jewelry. Owens, then a safety for the Indianapolis Colts, matched her in a custom Maestro Philippe chocolate-brown suit with satin lapels, a silver waist chain, and a floral lapel pin. The coordinated looks drew praise from fashion critics. InStyle named them among the best-dressed celebrities of the evening, and The Sporting News described them as "one of the biggest power couples in sports." For a moment, it seemed the night would belong to them.
That moment did not last. After Us Weekly shared a video of their arrival on Instagram, viewers began dissecting Owens' body language. In the clip, he stood beside Biles with a serious expression while she posed and smiled for photographers. The comments arrived quickly. One user wrote, "That's embarrassing." Another asked, "Why doesn't he smile?" A third joked, "He standing there like a statue." The criticism spread to X, where reactions remained mixed. Some users defended the couple, calling them "easily one of the best dressed couples on the carpet tonight." Others continued to question Owens' demeanor, reading his reserved expression as evidence of discontent or disrespect.
The incident was not isolated. It resurrected memories of December 2023, when Owens appeared on "The Pivot" podcast and said "the men are the catch" in relationships. He also admitted that when Biles first messaged him on the dating app Raya in March 2020, he did not know who she was because he had not watched the Olympics while in college and training camp. Fans of the most decorated gymnast in history interpreted both statements as disrespectful—a dismissal of Biles' achievements and an inflated sense of his own importance. The backlash was severe and immediate.
Biles later revealed on the "Call Her Daddy" podcast that she had been present during the interview and initially thought Owens "killed it." Then she went on Twitter and saw people telling her to divorce him. "I'm like, 'He's the sweetest. He praises the ground that I walk on,'" she recalled. One night, she broke down crying: "Why are you guys talking about my husband like this? You don't know him." In the Netflix docuseries "Simone Biles Rising," she defended him directly: "It was taken out of context. He never said I wasn't a catch. He said he was a catch. Because he is." Owens also addressed the toll. In the same docuseries, he described the criticism as "disrespectful" and noted, "We're all human at the end of the day, regardless of what your job is." Biles articulated the underlying issue: fans were equating love with medals and accolades. "They equate our love to the amount of trophies and medals and accolades that I have, and that's not how you measure love," she said.
By September 2026, Owens had developed a measured response to the "Mr. Biles" label that critics had used as a taunt. "I take it as respect," he told The Athletic. "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." He acknowledged that the early attention was "tough at first because I'm a pretty quiet, private person. It almost makes you a shell of yourself." But Biles helped him reach a point of acceptance: "They're going to talk s--- either way it goes. So you might as well live your life how you want to."
The couple's relationship began on Raya in March 2020, a match that coincided with the pandemic shutdown and allowed them to "hang out all the time. It was meant to be," Owens said. They married in April 2023 and held a larger destination wedding in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, the following month. Their dynamic has been characterized by mutual support: Owens traveled to Paris for the 2024 Olympics, where Biles added four medals to her collection, and Biles has frequently attended his NFL games.
The 2026 ESPYS red carpet controversy was, on its surface, about whether a man smiled for photographers. In reality, it was another episode in an ongoing negotiation over how the public perceives Simone Biles' marriage. The friction stems from an asymmetry in public stature—Biles is a transcendent Olympic icon, and Owens is an NFL safety—that some fans interpret as a debt requiring constant repayment in visible adoration. Biles has consistently rejected that logic, insisting that love is not measured in medals. Owens, for his part, has reframed the "Mr. Biles" label from insult to affirmation of his wife's stature and his own confidence. Whether the next red carpet produces fewer viral debates remains uncertain, but the couple has demonstrated a consistent strategy: defend the relationship privately, absorb the criticism publicly, and refuse to let online commentary dictate the terms of their marriage.
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