Adam Rippon rang in 2022 by skating his way to matrimony.
The Olympic medalist revealed on Instagram Wednesday that he and longtime beau Jussi-Pekka Kajaala were married on New Year’s Eve in Encino, California. Though he did not divulge the exact location of the nuptials, he said the ceremony was a super intimate affair that included the two men and their officiant, Maria. Also present was their 4-month-old pit bull, Tony.
“One afternoon JP and I looked at each other and said the very classic *romantic* phrase of ‘let’s just go do it now.’ So we did,” Rippon wrote. “It was just the three of us and it was perfect.”
In an interview with People, the figure skater said he and Kajaala had always envisioned their wedding to be a low-key affair. Given that neither of them are fans of traditional New Year’s Eve festivities, they decided to repurpose the holiday in a deeply personal way.
Though Rippon joked that the brief ceremony took place under an arch decorated with “what you would get from the dollar store if you knew you had a wedding in five minutes,” he found himself surprisingly emotional during the vows.
“That was a moment where I wasn’t expecting it to be so sweet,” he said. “I cried when I left.”
Rippon rose to global prominence in 2018 when he and freeskier Gus Kenworthy became the first two openly gay men to compete for the U.S. at the Winter Olympics. He retired from competitive skating in November of that year, and has focused primarily on acting and screenwriting projects. In 2019, he released a well-received memoir, “Beautiful on the Outside.”
He and Kajaala, who works in real estate, started dating in April 2018 after meeting on Tinder. They got engaged in Kajaala’s native Finland in December 2020 after spending nearly a year apart from one another due to COVID-19.