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Exclusive interview with LGBTQ power couple Ali Krieger and Ashlyn Harris: 'If we want to create change we’ve got to put ourselves out there'

USWNT teammates Ali Krieger and Ashlyn Harris only went public with their relationship in March of last year - SAUL MARTINEZ
USWNT teammates Ali Krieger and Ashlyn Harris only went public with their relationship in March of last year - SAUL MARTINEZ
Women's Sport Social Embed
Women's Sport Social Embed

Strolling up to the revered American Vogue editor Anna Wintour at an event in New York last year, US goalkeeper Ashlyn Harris saw her opportunity. In the space of a few minutes she went from talking about fashion designer Thom Brown, whose clothes she happened to be wearing that day, to giving an impassioned insight into the importance of raising the profile of LGBTQ stories. Imagine, she suggested, if Vogue were to feature the wedding of Harris and her fiancee Ali Krieger in their magazine? This was about more than their own exposure as a couple, it was about elevating LGBTQ sports stories into a wider cultural space.

“I told her the importance of visibility in our community,” Harris, 34, says. “I actually thanked her because she’d put our engagement in Vogue and I just said that when I was younger I didn’t get to open a magazine and find people that look like me.”

US team-mates Krieger and Harris only went public with their relationship in March last year but have quickly become a LGBTQ power couple. They are by no means accidental advocates, though, as Harris’s anecdote proves.

“Within 24 hours of talking to [Wintour] everything aligned and I guess she wanted to do a bigger piece [on our wedding] to be part of the solution. It was major for us, because we wanted to celebrate our community.”

Getting women’s football and a gay love story into the hallowed pages of the most famous fashion magazine in the world? No small feat. But 2019 was all about pushing boundaries for Krieger and Harris, what with winning their second world title with the US national women’s team and launching a historic equal pay lawsuit against their federation. Creating a December wedding befitting the LGBTQ icons they have become, added another statement moment to their extraordinary year.

Photographs and a four-minute video of the wedding were broadcast within hours to their combined 1.6 million Instagram followers – plus Vogue’s story which went out to their readership and 26 million followers the next day. It was anything but private, but the couple insist that was exactly the point.

Ali Krieger and Ashlyn Harris were married in December  -  LuvRox Photography
Ali Krieger and Ashlyn Harris were married in December - LuvRox Photography

Every element of the wedding was central to the couples’ message: the cake cut open to reveal Pride rainbow layers; the tables were named after gay pioneers such as tennis legend Billie Jean King; US team-mate and fellow member of the LGBTQ community Megan Rapinoe was Harris’s maid of honour; while former team-mate Abby Wambach and her wife “bawled” during the ceremony’s final citation, as Sydney Leroux read out the US Supreme Court’s ruling to legalise gay marriage in 2015.

“Every single detail had a purpose, it made it so special and educational,” Harris says. “A lot of people think the wedding was very public, but that was planned. Sometimes it is kind of nice to keep those intimate moments to yourself, but if we really want to create change we’ve got to put ourselves out there and say this is normal, so that when kids open magazines they feel like they fit in, and don’t have to hide.

“And we needed to pay respect. So many people have suffered for us to be able to declare our love for each other and for it be legal and safe. That was the biggest driving force.”

They are serious about their new role. Alongside this intensity, though, they are also pretty hilarious company. You know that newly-wed glow people talk about? Apparently it can carry across oceans and down a telephone line.

Speaking a few weeks after their Miami nuptials, they jokingly introduce themselves in their “best British accents”. Then Krieger, 35, blindsides me with a deadpan question: “Who do you think looked better at our wedding – no pressure.” They crack up laughing in unison at my faltering reply.

Women's Sport newsletter in-article
Women's Sport newsletter in-article

The pair met at a 2010 national team training camp, and though the nature of their relationship evolved from team-mates to much more years ago, they only found the courage to reveal that last March – despite fan speculation mounting.

“We were nervous from when we met to when we were together,” Krieger says. “When we were younger we were obviously afraid to lose our jobs, sponsorships, and we weren’t sure how our team, coaches, staff, administration were going to react.”

Those fears were very real. Both used to play for Washington Spirit, a franchise that for years did not openly support the LGBTQ community in the way that the rest of the National Women’s Soccer League did.

Last November, Krieger said it made things difficult: “I just didn’t feel like I was playing for a club that really respected me and supported me and my lifestyle.”

They now play for Orlando Pride, but the experience taught them first hand what it means to have your identity stifled in a professional setting.

Krieger says they decided last March was the right time to go public partly because of the fact she did not make the SheBelieves national squad, so they thought it would not prove such a distraction.

Women’s sport must be a welcoming place for the LGBT community
Women’s sport must be a welcoming place for the LGBT community

“We felt like it was time. I wasn’t on the [USA] team, and we felt we’re kind of on different paths and maybe this is a good time,” she says. “Also people were speculating. So, what’s holding us back?”

“I think you get to a point where you stop living your life for other people,” Harris adds. “I wanted to be patient, because I wanted it to feel right for Ali. But I wasn’t living my life by the morals I’ve set for myself, in being open and honest with my fans. I’ve always been someone who’s really just given everything to the people around me, whether that was about addiction, depression or self-harm, but there was this huge element that I was keeping secret. Truthfully, it was eating me up a lot of times.

“I kept thinking about my younger self and the more I hid would be the more a young kid would hate themselves. Now, when I look back, I am sad and angry at myself for waiting that long. But it’s a process, not everything is perfect.”

Though for both of them it was their first public relationship with another woman, Harris says they do not want to be “boxed” into any label. “For Ali and I, it’s not about that,” she says. “I don’t need to identify as this, that or the other, this is the woman I love and I need people to respect that.”

One person who was behind them from the start was team-mate and close friend Rapinoe. Last year’s Ballon d’Or winner has also been the figurehead of the team’s battle with their federation over gender discrimination. They both are emphatic about the impact she has had in lifting the national team.

Ashlyn Harris, Megan Rapinoe and Ali Krieger celebrate their World Cup success in France - Getty Images
Ashlyn Harris, Megan Rapinoe and Ali Krieger celebrate their World Cup success in France - Getty Images

“I think we [as a team] empower each other, and I don’t think I could say that when I first got on the team,” Krieger says. “Megan has obviously led that charge.”

Harris agrees: “Megan has always been about giving people a voice. It’s never been just about her. She takes the selfish element out of it and I respect her for that.

“People are always like, ‘This movement’s been different than the rest’, because everyone right now is speaking their truth. And whatever that is, Megan’s giving you the freedom and telling you, ‘Hey, I have your back, I’m going to lead the way’. It has been the most incredible growth I’ve seen in this group – they have a platform and they’re not scared [to use it], and they’re not pushed to the bottom for someone else to rise.”

That momentum is not likely to end soon. 2020 looks like it will be just as big for Krieger and Harris with the US team. While former head coach Jill Ellis did not favour either player in her starting XI, they have the opportunity to impress her replacement, Vlatko Andonovski, ahead of this summer’s Olympic Games in Tokyo.

There, the US will attempt to do what no team have done before – win back-to-back World Cup and Olympic titles. Amid those preparations is their May court date for their lawsuit against US Soccer. Plus the couple’s LGBTQ advocacy, which they plan on continuing to incorporate into their every-day lives. But does speaking out on all these causes ever get exhausting?

“Of course,” Harris says. “Creating change isn’t something that you just talk about, though, you have to really embody it. It’s not easy, it’s not something you go in and out of – you’ve got to be all in.”

“We can sleep when we’re dead,” Krieger laughs.