Wimbledon icon Martina Navratilova, who won a record nine ladies' singles titles at the All England Club, will return to SW19 this week as a BBC pundit. The 69-year-old tennis legend is married to former Miss Universe finalist Julia Lemigova, who is 16 years her junior.
Navratilova's Wimbledon Legacy
Considered one of the greatest tennis players of all time, Navratilova was virtually unstoppable at Wimbledon throughout the 1980s. She claimed nine ladies' singles titles, six of which came consecutively between 1982 and 1987. She also won seven women's doubles crowns and four mixed doubles trophies. Navratilova spent 332 weeks ranked world No. 1 during her career.
Julia Lemigova's Background
Born in Moscow to a former Red Army colonel, Lemigova was crowned Miss USSR in 1990 and finished runner-up at the Miss Universe pageant in 1991. Before meeting Navratilova, she had a daughter with French banker Edouard Stern, who was murdered by his mistress in 2005, and another daughter from a previous relationship. She gained fame as a star of The Real Housewives of Miami, becoming the first housewife in the franchise's history to be married to another woman.
Their Love Story
Navratilova and Lemigova first met in a Paris nightclub in 2000. Speaking on Married to a Celebrity: The Survival Guide, Navratilova recalled: "I was at a club with some friends, a gay bar in Paris. We're sitting here, we're dancing and then we sit down and then there's this gorgeous woman standing at the bar and she's like...looking at me. I gave this Russian look to her. Really, it was more like, 'Okay, you are coming to talk to me now.'" Love did not blossom immediately, and they reconnected eight years later during the French Open.
Marriage and Family
The pair married in New York in 2014 after Navratilova proposed live on television during the US Open. They began discussing starting a family, but plans were delayed in early 2023 when Navratilova was diagnosed with stage 1 throat and breast cancer. "When you're adopting a child, it has to be about the child. And, right now, it's everything about Martina, and for her getting healthy, so we are putting it on hold," Lemigova explained. "You know, we were thinking any moment, the agency would call and give us happy news that we're going to have a baby... instead, we are fighting two cancers."
Navratilova announced she was free from cancer later that year. In August 2024, the couple adopted two young boys. Speaking to Entertainment Tonight in 2025, Lemigova said: "There's a difference between girls and boys. She's now with the boys, playing sports with them, teaching tennis, teaching baseball, teaching basketball. She's having such a blast. She's becoming like a kid herself, I feel, like 20 years younger. It's a completely different Martina that I'm seeing."
