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Megan Rapinoe, a World Cup-winning soccer player, is engaged to Sue Bird.
Sue Bird is a 4-time WNBA champion, a 13-time WNBA All-Star, and a 5-time Olympic Gold Medalist.
Megan and Sue became engaged in 2020.
The 2023 Women’s World Cup kicked off on July 20, beginning a month of intense soccer action. On Aug. 6, however, Megan Rapinoe’s FIFA World Cup career ended with an unfortunate penalty kick miss. A shared video showed the athlete during the life-changing moment, which happened when the USWNT and Sweden were both scoreless through 90 minutes and through extra time. Megan, who replaced Alex Morgan in the 99th minute, was selected for the fourth round of penalty kicks, and ended up blasting the ball over the right corner of the net before the USWNT was eliminated on penalty kicks three rounds later.
The midfielder and face of US Women’s Soccer previously announced she would retire after the end of the 2023 NWSL season in October. She then planned to finally have time to walk down the aisle with her fiancée, Sue Bird. Sue, 42, and Megan have been engaged for years and are super excited about walking down the aisle when the time comes. For those who don’t know anything about Megan’s No. 1 fan, read on to find out more.
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Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird (Gregory Pace/Shutterstock)
Who Is Megan Rapinoe’s fiancée, Sue Bird?
Suzanne Brigit Bird (b. Oct. 16, 1980) is a former WNBA player and a highly-decorated basketball player. The Long Island native played for the University of Connecticut, helping the Huskies win two NCAA championships during her tenure. The Seattle Storm picked Sue as the overall No. 1 pick in the WNBA Draft, and she would play with the team for twenty seasons. During that tenure, she would win the WNBA Championship four times and be named an All-Star 13-times.
In June 2022, she announced that she would retire from playing pro basketball following the 2022-23 season. Her career came to a close in September of that year when the Storm lost in the playoffs to the Las Vegas Aces.
“I’m proud of everything we’ve accomplished here,” she said after the game, per ESPN. “Of course I’m sad, but there’s happiness too, to be able to have a moment like that with the fans, to have them chant the way they did. I know the tears don’t look like happy tears, but there’s a lot of happiness.”
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Sue leans in to give Megan a kiss (BPI/Shutterstock)
Sue is also the WNBA’s all-time leader in assists and career starts and, at the time, the only player in the league to have appeared in 500 career games. Sue has also helped Team USA win five consecutive Olympic Gold Medals. Essentially, she’s one of the best to ever play the game.
“It’s been great,” Sue told Insider about retirement. “Really enjoyable kinda doing what I wanna do when I wanna do it.” Megan would say that Sue’s new life is causing “a lot of jealously.”
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Shortly after Megan announced that she was retiring at the end of the 2023 NWSL season, she spoke with reporters after practicing in Seattle, revealing that her fiancée was in Hawaii, per Insider. “I’m like, ‘I’m sorry, are you getting paid to go to Hawaii? What’s happening? Is this what it’s gonna be like?’ Have fun this year, you guys. Actually, it turns out I’m not coming back. Just kidding!”
When Did Sue Bird & Megan Rapino Get Together?
Megan and Sue began dating sometime in 2017. They first met while backstage at a photo shoot for the 2016 Rio Olympics, per NBC Sports. “She was in her basketball uniform, and she had her hair down,” Megan told NBC. “We kinda crossed, and she was like, ‘Oh, hey! Ready for your game?’ “Sue added, “I was like, ‘ha-ha … funny.’”
Megan regretted making “such a bad impression” with Sue. “So dorky,” Bird teased. “I walked away like, ‘I thought you were supposed to be cool?‘ We joke about it now ’cause she was a total dork.”
Despite Megan fumbling the pickup line, the two began dating. In 2017, Sue came out. Megan proclaimed herself gay in a 2012 interview in OUT magazine, but Sue didn’t share that fact about her until meeting Rapino. “I’m gay. Megan’s my girlfriend. … These aren’t secrets to people who know me,” the WNBA star said in a chat with ESPNW (h/t Bleacher Report).
(The World of Sports SC/Shutterstock)
“I don’t feel like I’ve not lived my life. I think people have this assumption that if you’re not talking about it, you must be hiding it like it’s this secret. That was never the case for me,” she said. As to why she decided to come out then, she said it was “happening when it’s happening because that’s what feels right. So even though I understand there are people who think I should have done it sooner, it wasn’t right for me at the time. I have to be true to that. It’s my journey.”
When Did Megan Rapino Propose To Sue Bird?
A picture is worth a thousand words, which is why Sue Bird didn’t feel the need to write a caption for the Instagram post she shared in October 2020. In the photo, she and Megan are in an Infinity pool – except Megan is actually on the side of it, down on one knee. This sweet proposal photo told the world Sue said “yes,” as she extended her hand to her future wife.
When Are Sue & Megan Getting Married?
“It’s been great to be engaged, but we actually haven’t planned or talked about much of anything,” Sue told People two months after Megan popped the question. The COVID-19 pandemic put a damper on planning. “I think the one thing we do agree on is that we would love to have our wedding once things have settled down in terms of COVID-19,” Sue said at the time, “because we want to have a stress-free environment where we are not having to worry about testing and this and that, which is kind of the life that we are living now.”
With the 2020 Tokyo Olympics running in 2021 and FIFA’s Women’s World Cup taking place in 2023, it’s been hard for Sue and Megan to carve out time to finally tie the knot.
“It’s funny. It’s more Megan. We’re on Megan’s schedule,” Sue said in a 2022 interview with The Seattle Times (h/t Us Weekly). “My schedule is open in the offseason. I got time. WNBA is only in the summer. I got time. We’re basically waiting to see what Megan’s soccer future holds, and then we’ll go on that. The soccer schedule is a nightmare. They literally play all year. If I had to guess a year, I think the World Cup is 2023 for them. It’ll probably be after that. It’s purely based on schedule. It’s not even what we want. If it was up to us, we would have done it a year ago.”
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