Simone Biles, less than two weeks after her 2024 Olympics ended with a silver medal, supported her husband, Jonathan Owens, on Saturday as the Bears safety faced the Bengals in a preseason game.
Biles walked out of a tunnel and toward the sideline pregame at Soldier Field, donning a jacket that appeared to feature Owens during his days with Packers — as the 29-year-old spent last season with the Bears’ rival following four years with the Texans.
“What’s up Chicago, go Bears,” Biles said in a video posted to the NFL’s X account.
Biles secured three gold medals in Paris — for the individual and team all-around titles, as well as for the vault — and finished behind Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade in the women’s floor final, though Biles admitted that her body was “slowly starting to shut down” near the end of the Olympics.
She had a calf injury scare during the Olympics and wore a walking boot — which she said was “just precautionary” — for an NBC interview following her floor final, and Biles wore a boot on her left foot Saturday while at the Bears game, too.
“Her ability to persevere through that and go out there and still dominate was amazing to watch,” Owens told reporters Aug. 7, according to ESPN. “My wife is a warrior. I equate it to how we are in football. You limp around, and it will hurt before, but as soon as you go, you forget about it. Pain tolerance, the way she was able to go out there and look graceful and people didn’t have a clue what was going on.”
The Bears allowed Owens to miss training camp sessions so he could fly to Paris and watch Biles in the Olympics, she said, and at one point, he wore a white shirt with “BILES,” and pictures of Team USA’s star gymnast, printed across the front.
Biles and Owens were engaged in February 2022 and married the following year.
Through the first half of Saturday’s game, Owens, listed as a backup safety on the Bears’ unofficial depth chart, had collected five tackles to help hold Cincinnati — which wasn’t playing star quarterback Joe Burrow — scoreless across the opening 30 minutes.
His NFL career started as an undrafted free agent, but he eventually inked the first multi-year contract of his career March 12 with a two-year, $4.75 million deal with the Bears, according to Spotrac.