The 2016 national champion didn’t make the podium skating individually at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, but he did share in the U.S. team’s bronze—and glided away with America’s heart all the same with his passion, musicality, style, spirited social media posts and general joie de vivre.
He certainly caught Sally Field‘s son’s eye, Sam Greismann tweeting out a snippet of an exchange between he and his Oscar winner mom in which she encouraged him, “Sam… he’s insanely pretty. Find a way.”
After Pyeongchang, Rippon skated on over to Dancing With the Stars and won the whole thing, and ended up on TIME‘s list of the “100 Most Influential People of 2018.” Ever since he’s been balancing his work in entertainment (guest-hosting RuPaul’s Drag Raceappearing in Taylor Swift‘s “You Need to Calm Down” video) and human rights activism.
He married husband Jussi-Pekka Kajaala on Dec. 31, 2021.
Talking about what he wanted to see from the Beijing Olympics, Rippon told E! News in January 2022, “What I hope that the audience remembers is that all these athletes are human and when we talk about them and we celebrate them, that they’re going to see the way people talk about them. Just remember that these are people who worked their entire lives for these moments whether it goes the way they want it to or not.”
Ahead of the 2026 Olympics, Rippon joined forces with Chase Cain to host this season of the My New Favorite Olympian podcast.
