The first time Serena Williams met future fiancé Alexis Ohanian, she tried to get him to vacate his breakfast table by suggesting a rat was in the area.
The second time she saw the Reddit co-founder, she thought he was a security guard detering a stalker.
Serena To Mac: Respect Me
The 23-time Grand Slam champion recounts the origins of her love story with Ohanian in the cover story of Vanity Fair's August issue.
Read the Vanity Fair cover story, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Buzz Bissinger, here.
Accompanied by exquisite photos of the couple shot by Vanity Fair photographer Annie Liebovitz, the cover story, "Serena Williams' Love Match" details how the pair met "by chance" when Ohanian sat next to Williams' table at a pool-side breakfast at the Cavalieri Hotel in Rome on May 12th, 2015.
“This big guy comes and he just plops down at the table next to us, and I’m like, ‘Huh! All these tables and he’s sitting here?,’ " Williams told Vanity Fair.
When Ohanian, who was admittedly "a little hungover", declined to move away from Serena's group, the pair struck up a conversation.
Among the other revelations from Vanity Fair:
Alexis proposed to Serena in nearly the same spot at the same Rome hotel where they first met.
The romance blossomed during a weekend in Paris where the pair spent six hours walking all over the City of Light like tourists.
Ohanian knew he wanted to marry Williams within a year of their first meeting.
“I felt like a door had been opened to a person who made me want to be my best self," Ohanian told Vanity Fair. "I find myself just wanting to be better by simply being around her because of the standard she holds.”
Williams informed her fiancé she was pregnant by summoning her to Melbourne, where she was playing the Australian Open in January, and handing him a bag filled with six positive pregnancy tests.
The 23-time Grand Slam champion sensed the marriage proposal was coming.
"I knew it was coming. I was like, ‘Serena, you’re 35, you’re ready. This is what you want,’ " Williams told Vanity Fair.
Photo credit: Annie Liebovitz/Vanity Fair