Venus Williams Confirms Engagement to Actor

Tennis legend Venus Williams has plenty to celebrate.

After winning her first singles match in over a year against Peyton Stearns, Williams, 45, confirmed her engagement to actor Andrea Preti, 37, Tuesday.

Williams, the older sister of fellow tennis star Serena Williams, shared the news in a post-match interview with Rennae Stubbs, who said, “You are now an engaged woman,” before asking if Preti played a role in her comeback.” Stubbs noted that Williams appeared “happy, a smile on your face. I mean, how much has he made a difference in your life?”

“My fiancé is here and he really encouraged me to keep playing,” the seven-time Grand Slam champion replied. “There were so many times where I just wanted to coast and kind of chill. Do you know how hard it is to play tennis? You guys don’t know how much work goes into this, like it’s 9 to 5 except you’re running the whole time. Lifting weights and just like dying and then you repeat it the next day. So he encouraged me to get through this and it’s wonderful to be here. He’s never seen me play.”

It’s unclear when exactly Preti, an actor, director, writer, and model who starred in the 2015 film One More Day, dropped to one knee and popped the question, however, Williams referring to him as her “fiancé” came amid months of engagement rumors. Speculation that the pair was set to tie the knot first sparked back in February after Williams was seen wearing a square-cut diamond ring on her ring finger following a tennis training session in Rome. She was again spotted wearing a ring on that finger as she and Preti attended the Dsquared2 Fall/Winter 2025 fashion show during Milan Fashion Week later that month.

Neither Williams nor Preti addressed the rumors, which wasn’t surprising considering that they have kept their romance mostly private. The pair have been romantically linked since at least 2024 when they were first spotted together on what appeared to be a romantic boating trip in Nerano, Italy that July.

Prior to her relationship with Preti, Williams previously dated model Elio Pis in 2012 and Nicholas Hammond in 2017. Speaking about her romantic life with Cosmopolitan in 2021, Williams said she wasn’t “desperate” to settle down,” adding to Glamour UK just a year later that she was ready to go with the flow of life.

“When life changes, you’ve got to know when to change,” she said. “You can’t hold on to either a relationship or the singleness.”