Joe Burrow and Olivia Ponton turned up together at the Kentucky Derby on May 2, ending weeks of speculation around the Cincinnati Bengals quarterback’s private life. An Instagram post from @peoplemagsports on Saturday showed the pair arriving at the Barnstable Brown Kentucky Derby event, with Ponton in an elegant beige dress and a large white hat and Burrow in a striped shirt.
The sighting matters because Burrow, 29, is one of the NFL’s biggest names and has spent much of the year under a sharper public lens than usual. In March, he was seen sitting next to Jessica Alba at a casino in Las Vegas, and a later report said there was nothing romantic going on between them. At the same time, Burrow and Ponton were believed to still be dating when those photos drew attention, and it has since become clear that they are still together and appear to be going strong.
Ponton, described as a supermodel in the source, also had a direct connection to one of the stranger moments in Burrow’s offseason. She was at his house when it was broken into and robbed in December 2024 while he was playing in a Monday Night Football game. That detail, coupled with how rarely the two are seen in public together, has made every appearance more closely watched than a typical celebrity outing.
Burrow has long preferred to keep his dating life personal, which is part of why the Alba rumors spread so quickly before being dismissed as having no romantic basis. The Derby appearance cuts through that noise. The photos and the caption from @peoplemagsports made the message plain: Burrow and Ponton are still together, and this time they chose to show it in public.