For years, Venus Williams described herself for years as very single and even “undatable,” a woman so comfortable in her own extraordinary life that she told friends and the media alike she was in no rush to change it for anyone.
Then, in 2024, an Italian actor named Andrea Preti spotted her across the room at the Gucci show during Milan Fashion Week, walked over, and told her she was beautiful. She responded in Italian. He asked if she wanted a drink.
What followed was one of the most unexpected and genuinely romantic love stories in the history of professional tennis, culminating in two wedding ceremonies in 2025, a six-day celebration in Florida, and a couple who have become one of the most admired pairs in international sport and celebrity culture. Venus Williams has a husband. His name is Andrea Preti.
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Venus Williams Husband: Who Is Andrea Preti?
Andrea Preti is an Italian-Danish actor, writer, director, producer, and former model who was born in 1988 in Copenhagen, Denmark, and spent most of his childhood there before relocating to Italy with his family as a teenager.
He grew up bilingual in Danish and Italian and later became fluent in English and French. This linguistic range reflects the international life he has always lived and that would eventually make him an ideal partner for one of the world’s most globally recognised athletes.
He studied acting at the Susan Batson Academy in New York, one of the most prestigious acting studios in the United States, whose alums include many of Hollywood’s most celebrated performers.
His acting career includes roles in My Beloved Enemy, Girls to Buy, Love Pret-à-Porter, and One More Day, and he has also worked as a writer and director on several independent productions.
He is represented within the Italian entertainment industry and has built a reputation as a thoughtful and intellectually serious performer.
Before his acting career fully developed, Preti worked as a model, building experience and connections in the international fashion world that would eventually bring him to Milan Fashion Week and into Venus Williams’s orbit.
He has appeared in multiple fashion campaigns and runway presentations and maintains strong connections within the Italian and international fashion communities, where he and Venus first encountered each other in 2024.
Preti has a striking physical presence that has made him a recognisable figure at the many high-profile events he has attended with Venus since their relationship became public.
The story of how Venus Williams and Andrea Preti met is one of the most genuinely cinematic in modern celebrity romance.
In early 2024, both were attending the Gucci fashion show during Milan Fashion Week. Preti spotted Venus across the room, walked over, and introduced himself. His opening line was direct, unguarded, and utterly disarming: “You’re so beautiful.”
Venus, who speaks enough Italian to navigate conversations in the fashion world, responded in Italian. They had a brief conversation, and he asked if she wanted a drink. That was the beginning.
They were first romantically linked publicly in July 2024, when they were photographed enjoying a boat ride together in Nerano, a coastal village on Italy’s Amalfi Coast, a setting of breathtaking beauty that perfectly suited the romance developing between them.
The photographs showed a relaxed and clearly happy Venus in a way that fans of the tennis legend had rarely seen throughout her entire adult life.
Both maintained their privacy carefully throughout the second half of 2024, neither confirming nor denying their relationship publicly.
Venus had spent years perfecting the art of keeping her personal life entirely separate from her public tennis persona, and she brought that same discipline to her relationship with Preti during its earliest stages.
In February 2025, engagement rumours began circulating when Venus was photographed wearing a diamond ring on her left hand while attending a Milan Fashion Week runway show with Preti. Neither confirmed the engagement at the time.
The confirmation came on July 22, 2025, during a post-match interview at the Mubadala Citi DC Open in Washington, D.C.
After discussing her match, Venus mentioned her fiancé publicly for the first time, saying: “My fiancé is here, and he really encouraged me to keep playing. He’s never seen me play.”
The casual, warm, and completely unperformed manner of the confirmation was entirely consistent with Venus’s approach to every aspect of their relationship.
Wedding
Venus Williams and Andrea Preti married twice in 2025, in two ceremonies that reflected both their different cultural backgrounds and the practical realities of international marriage paperwork.
Their first ceremony took place on September 18, 2025, in Ischia, a volcanic island in the Bay of Naples, Italy. The location held deep personal significance for Preti, who is Italian, and the couple had always dreamed of marrying there.
Venus explained the reasoning behind the two ceremonies to Vogue in December 2025, saying: “We had this dream to do our wedding in Italy. But we didn’t have enough time to do the paperwork because I’m a foreigner. It can take about eight months. So we decided to have a second wedding.”
The Italian ceremony was an intimate and deeply personal affair attended by close family and friends. It was photographed by David Bastianoni, who described his approach as blending an editorial eye with documentary sensitivity to keep everything natural and respectful of the moment.
Their second ceremony took place on December 19, 2025, in Palm Beach, Florida, where Venus is based and where the couple legally married in the United States. What was initially described as a courthouse ceremony evolved into something considerably more elaborate.
The event became a six-day celebration that included a yacht party on day one, a bridal shower on day two, a pool party and outing to an exclusive Miami members’ club on day three, a sports day honouring Venus’s career on day four, a sunrise civil ceremony on day five, described as a morning of presence for the couple, and the full wedding ceremony and reception on day six.
Venus wore a white strapless A-line dress, while Preti wore a white tuxedo. Photographs from both ceremonies were featured in The Knot magazine’s 30th Anniversary Issue in spring 2026, giving the world its first detailed visual account of the celebrations.
In July 2026, the couple attended Wimbledon together, photographed hand in hand in coordinating white outfits as Venus prepared to play doubles with her sister Serena Williams in her first Wimbledon appearance since returning to competitive tennis.
Their warmth and ease at the All England Club, attending practice sessions together and spending time with Serena’s family, including her husband, Alexis Ohanian, and their daughters, presented a picture of a genuinely integrated partnership that had developed with remarkable speed and depth since their meeting at the Gucci show just two years earlier.
Career
Venus Ebony Starr Williams is the fourth of five daughters born to Richard Williams and Oracene Price. She and her younger sister, Serena, grew up in Compton, California, learning tennis on public courts under the guidance of their father, Richard, who famously wrote a 78-page tennis plan before either of his daughters was born.
Venus turned professional in 1994 at the age of 14 and went on to build one of the most decorated careers in the history of the sport.
She won seven Grand Slam singles titles: five Wimbledon championships (2000, 2001, 2005, 2007, and 2008) and two US Open titles (2000 and 2001).
She reached the world No. 1 ranking for the first time in February 2002 and held it on multiple occasions throughout her career.
She has also won 14 Grand Slam doubles titles, most of them alongside Serena, making the Williams sisters the most successful doubles partnership of the Open Era.
She won four Olympic gold medals, three in doubles with Serena and one in singles at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, as well as one Olympic silver medal in mixed doubles.
Beyond her achievements on the court, Venus Williams has been one of the most influential figures in the business of tennis and in the broader conversation about equality in sport.
In 1998, she wrote a letter to the editor of The Times arguing that Wimbledon should award equal prize money to men and women.
In 2007, Wimbledon finally implemented equal prize money, with Venus winning the women’s singles title that same year and receiving the same prize money as the men’s champion for the first time in the tournament’s history.
She is widely credited as one of the primary driving forces behind this landmark change.
In business, Venus founded the interior design firm V*Starr Interiors in 2002 and the activewear and lifestyle brand EleVen in 2007.
She holds a degree in fashion design from the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, is a licensed real estate agent, and co-owns the Miami Dolphins alongside her sister Serena, making them the first Black women to own stakes in a major American professional sports franchise.
She also co-chaired the 2026 Met Gala in May 2026, one of the fashion industry’s most prestigious public roles.