Love is a many-splendored thing, especially when you’re gawking at it from the outside. In this column, we’ll be examining the celebrity couples that give us hope for our own romantic futures and trying to learn what we can from their well-documented bonds.
I love when couples have something major in common, whether it’s a fondness for speculating about the inner workings of a tiny, mean white dog’s mind (which was the main thing that united my ex and me) or sports—like pro soccer player Trinity Rodman and her tennis-star boyfriend Ben Shelton. The two athletes have been publicly dating since March 2025, and I have never felt more seen than I did by Rodman’s laughing three-word response to Shelton omitting a mention of her during an interview after his quarterfinal win over Carlos Alcaraz at the US Open: “What about me?” Exactly, diva!
Momentary post-match interview lapse aside, it’s sweet to see how devoted Shelton, 24, and Rodman, 23, appear to be to each other. “It’s funny because she’s really gotten into tennis the way that I’ve gotten into soccer. She’s watching it all the time. Sometimes I’ll go home and she will have YouTube on, watching one of my old matches,” Shelton said recently. “Some people can say that it’s difficult to maintain a relationship where you have two professional athletes. But in my opinion, to have somebody who understands what you go through is very, very important.”
Relatedly, after that grueling quarterfinal match on Tuesday, which ended after 3 a.m., Rodman, who plays for the Washington Spirit, reportedly drove five hours to be at practice on time the following day.
Rodman donning an “I <3 My Boyfriend” shirt—along with an ear-to-ear grin—while watching Shelton compete at the US Open last week. Nobody has been this cool watching their man play tennis since Zendaya in Challengers.
Photo: Getty Images
In a world of increasing ennui and been-there behavior from coupled-up celebrities, I find it genuinely thrilling how excited Rodman and Shelton seem to be to support each other during the biggest moments of their respective careers; let us not forget, Shelton was also in attendance to see the Washington Spirit defeat the Houston Dash on July 3. It can’t be easy to balance two booming athletic careers, but I appreciate that Rodman and Shelton’s enthusiastic fandom truly seems to go both ways.
