Gus Kenworthy is off the slopes and down on one knee. The veteran Olympic skier proposed to his boyfriend, fashion executive Andrew Rigby, during a clifftop moment off the coast of Mallorca, Spain, the couple revealed this week.
A Cliffside Surprise
Kenworthy told People he led Rigby on what he called "a little adventure," taking a private dinghy from the St. Regis pier before hiking up to a cliffside spot with a picnic blanket and a pitcher of extra-sweet margaritas, a nod to how Rigby likes his cocktails. After the proposal, the dinghy didn't head back to shore. Instead it carried them to a chartered boat where six friends had been hiding, ready to celebrate.
To say I was shocked was an understatement. And then to see our friends there immediately after Gus proposed? Wow.
Andrew Rigby
Kenworthy announced the news on Instagram on August 5 with the caption, "He said he'd think about it!" The two now wear Cartier rings, gold for Kenworthy and platinum for Rigby.
A Decade in the Making
Kenworthy and Rigby, a finance and fashion executive, first crossed paths in Sydney years ago during a brief encounter while Kenworthy was there for a speaking engagement. They properly reconnected at a mutual friend's birthday party in Guadalajara, Mexico, in March 2024, which sparked a long-distance relationship between Los Angeles and Sydney. Kenworthy made things Instagram official that August, and the couple relocated together to New York the following year.
More Context: What This Engagement Means
Kenworthy's road to this moment says a lot about how far LGBTQ+ visibility in sports has come, and how personal that progress can be. He won slopestyle silver at the 2014 Sochi Olympics while still closeted, competing under Russia's anti-LGBTQ laws and, by his own account, media training that warned no athlete would be exempt from them. He came out publicly in 2015.
I never got to be proud of what I did in Sochi because I felt so horrible about what I didn't do.
Gus Kenworthy
Four years later at PyeongChang, he kissed then-boyfriend Matt Wilkas on live television before his qualifying run, competing alongside Adam Rippon as the first two openly gay men to represent Team USA at a Winter Olympics. Since then, Kenworthy has stayed visibly engaged with the community, working with the Trevor Project and founding the Worthy Foundation in 2022.
What to Watch
Kenworthy is expected to compete again at the 2026 Winter Olympics, where Team GB curler Bruce Mouat, an openly gay world number one, will also take the ice, a small but telling sign that out athletes are no longer the exception at the Games. For now, though, the focus is simpler: a Mediterranean proposal, a summer of Pride celebrations in Berlin and Amsterdam, and two rings from Cartier.
Cover photo: Adam Rippon, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
