Tennis superstar Martina Navratilova has proposed to her girlfriend, Julia Lemigova, during the US Open.
57-year-old Navratilova got down on one knee in the Tennis Channel suite to propose to Lemigova – and the entire thing was shown on the stadium’s big screen after the men’s semi-finals.
Novak Djokovic had just been beaten by Japanese Kei Nishikori, three sets to one, when Navratilova announced their engagement:
#TennisChannel‘s @Martina Navratilova proposing in the TC @usopen suite! Congrats!! #shesaidyes #happilyeverafter pic.twitter.com/bDfdCVfDAD
— TennisChannelPR (@TennisChannelPR) September 6, 2014
Navratilova said to the stadium:
“I have been waiting for the right time to ask Julia to marry me. I thought this was the right place and the right time to pop the question and thankfully I got a ‘yes’.”
Later, Navratilova told The Associated Press that she was very nervous: “She said yes. It was kind of an out-of-body experience. You’ve seen people propose at sporting events before, in movies, in real life. Here it was happening to me. It was like I was watching myself do it.”
Navratilova has previously won 18 Grand Slam single titles, four of which were in the US Open.
Lemigova is an entrepeneur that was crowned Miss USSR in 1981.
The couple have been together since 2006. They plan to get married in Florida, where it was ruled last month that the state’s ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional.
