What You Don't Know About Serena Williams' Husband, Alexis Ohanian

Any Serena Williams fans would likely recognize her husband, Alexis Ohanian. In some ways, he's her biggest fan of all. Before her retirement, he could usually be seen in the stands loudly cheering her on or holding their daughter, Olympia, during her matches. And you've likely seen what an adorable couple they make together on the red carpets. But while marrying the world's greatest tennis player is a claim to fame in itself, it's far from the only impressive thing about Ohanian. As an entrepreneur and investor, he made a name for himself in his early 20s when he co-founded Reddit, the community-based site that was valued at $10 billion as of August 2021.

Between his family background, how he started out, meeting Williams, and where he is now, there's a lot more to Ohanian's story than meets the eye. We've compiled the most interesting facts about his life and how he became the husband, father, and success story that he is today.

You may imagine that someone so successful later in life was a star student, but according to Alexis Ohanian, that was not the case. During most of his school years, living in Maryland where his family had moved, he didn't have any real interest in his school subjects. "I felt pretty ambivalent about the whole thing," Ohanian told Inc.

To him, school was just taking away from time to do what he really cared about. And what he really loved was spending time online doing all kinds of things, like "creating clans in Quake II or starting a web design nonprofit. In school, I was just a kid. Online, I had authority," he said (via Inc.). He noted that his parents didn't mind the amount of time he spent online, although he added, "they didn't know I was emailing total strangers." Ohanian loved video games and building things in the virtual world. He told the magazine he was worried that when he went to college, no one would play video games. But when he arrived, he was relieved to see Steve Huffman, his roommate and future Reddit cofounder, playing Gran Turismo 2.

Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman came up with the idea for Reddit when Y Combinator, a startup accelerator, turned down their original idea for MyMobileMenu. Paul Graham, the co-founder of Y Combinator, said they liked Huffman and Ohanian, but not their idea. "You guys need to build the front page of the internet," he said, via Inc. Magazine. With that direction in mind, Huffman and Ohanian spent the next three weeks developing what became Reddit. Ohanian described the simple concept to Inc., saying, "It was just web links and text submitted by users, with Interesting or Uninteresting buttons."

Everything was going well, but about a month into creating Reddit, Ohanian received shocking news. His then-girlfriend had fallen from a fifth-floor balcony and was in a coma. Fortunately, she got out of the hospital a few months later, but not long after that, Ohanian got a call from his dad saying that his mother had brain cancer. Though shocking and tragic, the news did give him some perspective. "Waking up every morning with a company is a lot of pressure. But when you're aware of what other people are waking up with, it's a whole lot easier," Ohanian said. He continued to push himself to make Reddit a success so that his work and his mother's support "was not in vain."

Alexis Ohanian and Serena Williams' relationship seems like a real-life romcom, starting with their surprise meeting in 2015. The two of them were staying in the same hotel in Rome, where Williams was playing in the Italian Open later that day. Williams and Ohanian retold their meeting to Vanity Fair, admitting that at first, Williams saw her future husband as nothing more than an irritation. She was ordering breakfast with members of her team, and they were expecting more people who were going to sit at a nearby table. When Ohanian took the table, Williams' group started telling him there was a rat, hoping to scare him off. When Ohanian told them he was from Brooklyn and rats didn't scare him, Williams invited him to sit with them.

Though they exchanged numbers, it wasn't obvious that they'd become the power couple they are now. Williams even thought he was more interested in one of her friends. But a few months later, she invited him to watch her compete in Paris. Ohanian wasn't sure if the invitation was genuine, but he decided to go, saying, "Even if she blows me off and we don't even hang out, I'm still going to have an amazing time in Paris." Fortunately, Williams exceeded his expectations, and the two of them explored Paris for hours before her tournament. From that point on, their relationship and connection only grew.

As the founder of Reddit, Alexis Ohanian is a huge success in his own right, but since marrying the star athlete Serena Williams, he's often thought of first as her husband. The internet entrepreneur seems happy to let his wife take center stage. He's always been a huge supporter of Williams' tennis career and can be seen in the stands cheering her on throughout her matches. In 2021, he solidified his spot as her biggest fan, wearing a shirt that said "Greatest Female Athlete" with the word "female" crossed out, so it instead read "Greatest Athlete." To make it even clearer who he was referring to, the T-shirt included a picture of his wife (via Popsugar).

During a Twitter exchange with a fan, he shared his thoughts on people referring to him as "Serena William's husband." He later posted a screenshot of the exchange on his Instagram, which said, "I'll be a self-made billionaire one day and most people will still know me as Serena's husband (or Olympia's dad) and that's fine by me." In the post's caption, Ohanian went on to say, "TBH I'm hoping to be known as @olympiaohanian's papa." It's clear he loves his role as supportive spouse and father or, as he prefers, "papa."

After his startup success with Reddit, Alexis Ohanian has continued supporting businesses he believes in as an investor. According to CNBC, he's invested in startups like Impossible Foods and Sorare. Speaking to CNBC Make It, Ohanian shared how his investing career started. "I was really lucky. I sold Reddit at 23 and we made more money than my folks had made their entire working lives, and I thought, I don't want to screw this up," he explained. In an effort to be smart with his money, Ohanian said he hired a financial advisor to manage it for him.

Now, Ohanian believes that hiring someone to invest his money was a good "crutch" to get him started, but that it's important to him to do his own research and know exactly where his money is invested. "You don't want to stay indebted to someone else's expertise," he said, later adding, "This is the advice I would give to anyone, which is, take the time, and there are so many amazing resources online now, to do the work, to understand this stuff yourself before entrusting it to someone else."

In 2022, Serena Williams announced her retirement from tennis. After proving herself as the greatest player time and time again, she still loves the sport but is walking away for her family. In a piece she wrote for Vogue, Williams explained that she and Ohanian want to have another baby. "I never wanted to have to choose between tennis and a family ... If I were a guy, I wouldn't be writing this because I'd be out there playing and winning while my wife was doing the physical labor of expanding our family," she said. Though it was a difficult choice, it felt like the right time.

After Williams shared her plans to stop competing, Ohanian took to Instagram to share his support. He wrote, "I've seen over the last seven years how much y'all love my wife ... Plenty of folks have told me 'how Reddit changed their life,' but the scale & impact of 'how Serena changed my life' stories absolutely dwarfs it."

Speaking further about his decision to step down from Reddit's board and offer his seat to a Black candidate, Alexis Ohanian admitted he might not have made that decision if he wasn't married to Serena Wiliams. By seeing her life and experiences up close, he became more aware of the double standard they faced. "I have never walked in a room and not felt 100% confident to be there, not felt 100% welcomed there," he told CBS This Morning. 

Before meeting Williams, Ohanian said wasn't as aware of what a privilege that was. But he quickly saw how his wife was not given the same treatment. Ohanian explained that their relationship opened his eyes to blind spots he's had, saying, "To have that front row seat, not just to her greatness, but everything she has to endure ... that made the education come really quickly."