Venus Williams married actor-producer Andrea Preti a few weeks after the 2025 U.S. Open, closing a relationship that moved from whispered sightings to a wedding in Ischia. The pair exchanged vows on the volcanic island off the coast of Naples at a five-day celebration.
Williams, who has 49 singles titles, including two U.S. Open championships and five Wimbledon titles, confirmed the engagement publicly on July 22, 2025, after winning her first-round match at the 2025 D.C. Open. “My fiancé is here and he really encouraged me to keep playing,” she said then, turning a post-match interview into the first clear confirmation that the rumors around her love life were true.
The clues had been building for months. Williams and Preti were first spotted boating together off Italy’s Amalfi Coast in July 2024. By February 2025, engagement rumors were circulating after she was seen wearing a diamond ring during a tennis training session in Rome. On February 25, the two made their first public appearance together as a couple at the Dsquared2 womenswear show during Milan Fashion Week, and Williams was again seen with a diamond ring on her left hand.
Williams later told Vogue that they met at the Gucci show during Milan Fashion Week. She said she had been on a sisters’ trip in Lake Como when she got a last-minute invite and went on a whim, while Preti was tired and neither of them had planned to be there. That chance meeting became the start of a relationship that stayed mostly out of view until the D.C. Open interview put a name to it.
Preti brings his own creative résumé to the marriage. Half Italian and half Danish, he grew up in Denmark before moving to Italy as a teenager. He studied acting at the Susan Batson Academy in New York City, has written and directed four films since 2013, and debuted One More Day and The Wolf Man in 2014. He is also developing an untitled project set in 19th-century southern Italy that deals with homophobia and societal prejudice.
The tension in the story was never whether Williams would keep playing tennis; it was how long she would keep her relationship private while the signs kept surfacing in public. She answered that by naming Preti as her fiancé in July, and then by marrying him after the U.S. Open, making clear that the man she credited with encouraging her career was now her husband.
