Talk about modern love! Olympic freestyle skier Gus Kenworthy gushed over his boyfriend, Matthew Wilkas, and revealed the totally relatable way the couple met.
“I sent him a message on Instagram,” the 26-year-old athlete previously told Us Weekly and other reporters, adding that the duo are committed to making their long-distance relationship work. “We’re great. We work through all of our issues, we talk, we have amazing communication. But it’s also like … It’s up and down. I spend so much of my time on the road and traveling. We’ll go eight weeks without seeing each other. It’s a difficult relationship, but we work on it.”
Although Kenworthy has a house in Denver, Colorado, he tries to spend the majority of his time off with Wilkas, 39, in NYC. “I’m kind of back-and-forth between the two, but more in New York at the moment,” he explained. “Probably after these Olympics, I’ll figure it out and be there more, maybe get rid of my place in Colorado.”
The silver medalist and the playwright stay in constant communication, even when they can’t physically be with one another. “[We] FaceTime a lot, text, I send him photos of things I see throughout the day, funny things,” Kenworthy said. “When I was just doing the show that I was doing in Peru, we were completely out of contact for a month, so it was quite difficult. Coming back, we had so much to catch up on. But in a way, it was almost nice.”
Kenworthy started dating Wilkas in November 2015, one month after he came out in an interview with ESPN.
“Since I came out of the closet, I’ve gotten to just really be myself and feel authentic and honest and genuine,” he recently disclosed to Us. “It’s just been a huge relief for me competitively.”
With Reporting by Carly Sloane
To learn more about Kenworthy, visit teamusa.org. The Olympics air on NBC.