Tennis great Serena Williams once revealed the offbeat first encounter with her current husband, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian.

The 23-time Grand Slam title winner remembered running into Ohanian in 2015 while having dinner at a hotel in Rome during the Italian Open. The encounter was frustrating to begin with, but ended in a serendipitous connection.

Serena Williams Reveals How a Rat Joke Led to Romance

Williams was in Rome playing at the Italian Open, building up to Roland Garros. Williams said she and some friends were having a pre-match lunch at the Hotel Cavalieri when a tall, unknown man sat down at the table beside them, even though the hotel was nearly empty.

That individual turned out to be Ohanian, who had no idea about Williams at that time. The seating decision did not go over well with Williams and her team, who swiftly hatched a plan to move him aside in an unconventional manner.

“This big guy comes and he just plops down at the table next to us,” Serena Williams remembered in a 2017 Vanity Fair interview, recalling her confusion. “And I’m like, ‘Huh! All these tables and he’s sitting here?’”

With a little help from her friend Zane Haupt, the group jokingly warned Ohanian there was a “rat” nearby in hopes of scaring him off. But Ohanian, unfazed, replied:

“I’m from Brooklyn. I see rats all the time.”

Amused by his response and unwillingness to budge, Williams finally told him the truth:

“No, we just don’t want you sitting there. We’re going to use that table.”

That instance of candor broke the ice, and shortly, Williams extended an invitation for Ohanian to join them. The two strangers ended up touring Rome later that day, and their bond immediately intensified from there.

Serena Williams and Alexis Ohanian Have Two Daughters Together

It wasn’t long after that their relationship became more solid, and in December 2016, Williams proposed in the very same hotel where they had first met. Williams announced the engagement poetically on Reddit.

In April of 2017, she revealed that she was pregnant, and in September of that year, they welcomed their daughter Olympia Ohanian Jr. The pair got married in a celebrity-filled New Orleans wedding in November of 2017, with family and friends in attendance, as well as A-list guests.

Serena Williams retired from professional tennis in 2022 to concentrate on family and other activities. In 2023, at the Met Gala, she announced that she was pregnant once again. Their second daughter, Adira, was born that August.