Olympic gold medalists Evan Bates and Madison Chock make the perfect pair on and off the ice.
Chock and Bates, who were first partnered during the 2011-2012 figure skating season, started dating in 2017.
“We just really fell in love on the ice and grew closer together,” Bates exclusively told Us Weekly in February 2018, noting that he had a crush on Chock when they were teens. “I love her personality. I love her zest for life.”
Bates and Chock have continued to go for the gold at the Olympic games, which impacts their romance.
“When we’re training, we sort of lead kind of quiet lives,” he told Us. “We stay home a lot and we go to bed early!”
After five years together, Bates proposed in June 2022 during a vacation in Thailand. While preparing for their 2024 wedding, they still enjoy skating together in competitions.
“We still love what we do and we enjoy the process,” Chock gushed to Olympics.com in 2023. “Having to put in the work day in and day out over the years, you have to be in love with the process. That’s something that we’ve done and we still have those feelings.”
Keep scrolling for Chock and Bates’ cool-as-ice relationship timeline:
2011
The pair were first partnered during the 2011 season. (Bates previously placed 11th at the 2010 Olympics with then-partner Emily Samuelson.)
Years later, Chock gushed to NBC Sports that she and Bates “got on really well” even before they competed together, gushing that they had “good chemistry right from the start.”
2017
Amid their career highs, Bates and Chock started dating.
2018
They adopted two toy poodles together, Stella and Henry.
“Our dogs look like us! My dog is blonde and has curly hair, her dog is black and has, like, really distinct eyebrows,” Bates joked to Us that February. “We have really nice dogs. They’re amazing!”
February 2022
Chock and Bates competed together at the Olympic Games in 2014, 2018 and 2022. They were named co-captains of the 2022 ice skating team during the tournament in Beijing.
June 2022
“Left home with my boyfriend, coming back with my fiancé! 🥰❤️❤️❤️,” she wrote via Instagram, confirming Bates had popped the question.
January 2024
They won their first Grand Prix Final title in December 2023, one month before officially becoming Olympic gold medalists.
Chock, Bates and the rest of Team USA had initially finished in second behind the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) during the team figure skating event. After a lengthy investigation, ROC star athlete Kamila Valieva was disqualified for doping, leading Team USA to take home the gold instead.
“It’s been very unexpected,” Chock said on the Today show during an interview with Bates and their teammates. “We just didn’t have much information and people would always ask us. … I didn’t realize how much had been weighing on me, and probably, weighing on all of us, until we found [out] the news. It almost felt like a weight had been lifted to just feel this closure from the Beijing games.”
June 2024
Bates and Chock wed on June 20 in the bride’s native Hawaii, later telling People about the ceremony’s traditions.
“The leis represent unity and the coming together of separate elements to make a whole greater than the sum of its parts,” Chock said. “In marriage, you come together as individuals to create a partnership together.”
January 2025
Chock and Bates won their sixth U.S. ice dancing championship on January 24, tying the record for most wins by an American team with retired skaters Meryl Davis and Charlie White.
March 2025
The couple made history by taking home their third consecutive gold medal at the ISU 2025 World Figure Skating Championships, becoming the first pair to do so in nearly three decades.
“It still feels a little surreal, honestly. I think it’s gonna take a little bit to sink in,” Chock said of their success during a joint interview on Today. “But we just had the best time. Those were our two best performances that we could have possibly done, and we’re so happy to have executed them at the World Championships. There’s no better place.”
Noting that she and Bates are “really excited for this upcoming season,” Chock teased that the 2026 Winter Olympics will mark their “final” season of skating. “We’ve had such an incredible last three years of skating and growing and we’ve learned so much about ourselves,” she shared. “And we’re really looking forward to taking on this final chapter and putting our whole hearts and our whole minds, all of it together to accomplish our goals.”
January 2026
In an exclusive interview with Us, Bates recalled the moment something shifted in their professional relationship.
“We skated together for five years and it was just a friendship, but the friendship was good,” Bates said. “From day one we always had a connection. We were laughing, we enjoyed our time together. It made skating so fun. Over the five years, we had success, but also didn’t have success. We had a lot of trying times. In those trying times, I really realized how much I relied on Maddie and really felt connected to her in a way that went beyond just as a skating partner.”
He continued, “I remember thinking, ‘I can’t really imagine one day walking out of the rink and going our separate ways, being friends and just not seeing each other anymore.’ I made the realization, I shared the realization and, luckily, the realization was reciprocated. That changed everything in our relationship and our partnership.”
Chock admitted his revelation “came out of the blue.”
“I knew we always had an incredible chemistry,” she said. “We had so much fun together. We were great friends. Training was always fun because we always just got along. We had the same work ethic. But when he told me how he felt, I was so surprised because I didn’t see it coming at all.”
Chock continued, “When I really sat with it and thought about it, I was like, ‘Wait a minute. I feel the same things about you. This is incredible.’”
Read the full article here
