U.S. downhill skier Breezy Johnson is ending her run at the 2026 Winter Olympics with a gold medal, a fiancé and a message from Taylor Swift.
In an interview with CBS News, Johnson says the life of a professional athlete can sometimes be at odds with her personal life, but at Milano Cortina, the two paths became one after her boyfriend Connor Watkins got down on one knee at the finish line of her final race.
“I had just always had this like thing in the back of my head that was like ‘it’d be fun to get engaged at the Olympics,'” Johnson said.
Watkins recalled Johnson giving him a subtle hint in 2024, in which she reminded him that if he’s serious about their relationship — the Olympics are two years away. While the two knew they were on the same page, the proposal this week still came as a surprise to Johnson.
The 30-year-old picked up her first Olympic gold in the women’s downhill event last week, but she crashed out of contention in the women’s Super-G on Thursday. She wasn’t expecting much when Watkins asked her to meet by the finish line.
“I was like ‘Man, everybody’s gonna leave. I’m gonna be here all alone’…And then he got down on one knee and I was like, ‘Oh,'” Johnson said. “He just…his words, and I just started crying.”
When asked about what he said to Johnson, Watkins recited: “Breezy Noble Johnson, you worked so hard and achieved so much, yet you still find the time to make me feel special. Make me feel love. And most importantly, take the time to help me love myself. And now that i know what that feels like, I want to spend the rest of my life with you by my side.”
Watkins, a self-acknowledged planner, said he had the ring since August, telling CBS News he worked with a jeweler with a guidance from a friend to create the sapphire and white sapphire engagement ring with a white gold band.
He also had a wooden jewelry box made, engraved with “Honestly, who are we to fight the alchemy?” — lyrics from a Taylor Swift song, “The Alchemy,” in which the singer appears to reference her fiancé Travis Kelce.
“That song really resonated with me,” Johnson said. “There’s really no better feeling than not the winning, but the getting to share that winning with the people that you love.”
When Swift congratulated her on Instagram, Johnson said, “I just lost it.”
“Mikaela [Shiffrin] was there,” Johnson recalled the moment she and her Team USA colleague, the most decorated alpine skier ever, saw Swift’s comment on the engagement. “And I could tell [Shiffrin] was like ‘I’ve never been so jealous of Breezy in my life.'”
The couple says they were keeping Valentine’s Day pretty “low key,” but they had plans to watch their good friend Avital Carroll compete in women’s dual moguls.
Carroll, an American-born skier who now competes for Austria, helped Watkins designed the engagement ring.
When asked about the wedding planning, Watkins said there’s still a lot of decisions to be made.
“We’ve got to figure out if we want a big or a small wedding,” he said. “We’ve talked about a ski wedding. We’ve talked a destination…We gotta figure out what we want.”
