{"id":121224,"date":"2025-09-05T17:37:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T17:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/121224\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T17:37:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T17:37:07","slug":"worlds-richest-tennis-stars-parents-with-18-year-age-gap-met-by-luck-tennis-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/121224\/","title":{"rendered":"World’s richest tennis star’s parents with 18-year age gap met by luck – Tennis – Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jessica Pegula’s billionaire parents met entirely by chance before enjoying 32 blissful years of marriage.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Aryna Sabalenka mounted a comeback from a set behind to beat Pegula 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 in the US Open semifinals at Arthur Ashe Stadium. Her mom was in attendance, making a rare public appearance with Pegula discussing why that meant so much.<\/a><\/p>\n

Right after the heartbreaking loss, the World No. 4 faced an odd inquiry about her family’s $100 million yacht<\/a> – particularly whether the lavish boat was docked in New York<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I think so,” she responded. “I don’t really know where they have been staying. I think they were anchored somewhere, but I haven’t been or seen them. I just see them after the matches, so I’m not really sure what they’ve been doing on the other days.”<\/p>\n

Back in 1991, Pegula’s parents – Terry and Kim – coincidentally encountered each other at a neighborhood restaurant in upstate New York<\/a>. At that moment, Kim had just finished her studies at Houghton College with a communications degree and aspired to build a career in broadcast journalism.<\/p>\n

To earn funds for a fishing expedition to Alaska, Kim visited the establishment to seek a waitressing position. While filling out the required forms, she began chatting with Terry, who was dining at the restaurant.<\/p>\n

The 39 year old divorced father handed Kim his business card before ultimately providing her with a role at East Resources, the oil and gas exploration and production firm he established. Despite the 18-year age difference between Kim and Terry, Kim admitted that her family was initially hesitant about their relationship.<\/p>\n

“I met him when I was 21 and he was 39,” Kim revealed on the ‘Just B with Bethenny Frankel’ podcast in 2022. “Back then thirty years ago, it wasn’t seen a lot. Now you see a lot of it, especially here in Boca.<\/p>\n

DON’T MISS: <\/p>\n

\u201cBut back then, my family was a little bit worried. He was divorced, had two children of his own and had his own business. He had I would say seven employees at the time when I met him.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy family are very conservative, very faith based growing up. And I was the only girl in the family. So the idea of me dating someone that was that much older who’s already divorced, has kids \u2014 plus \u2026 the fact that then I started working for him at the time \u2014 didn’t go over all that well at the beginning.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut again, it’s been such a great journey,\u201d she added. \u201cThings developed and I chose that path instead of going to Alaska and other things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite facing significant criticism for her unconventional relationship, Kim maintained that she never allowed external opinions to affect her relationship with Terry. “I grew up where I had a really good sense of myself,” she said.<\/p>\n

“I don’t know if it’s confidence, I don’t know, if it’s just [that I] had a good set of really core values.<\/p>\n

“I felt like, okay, as long as I felt I was doing the right things for the right reasons then what others perceived of me, I didn’t really care.”<\/p>\n

After a serendipitous meeting, Terry and Kim said their vows two years later and are now proud parents to three children: Jessica, Kelly, and Matthew.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jessica Pegula’s billionaire parents met entirely by chance before enjoying 32 blissful years of marriage. On Thursday, Aryna…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121225,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,27488,85546,85,747,6414,85545,1751],"class_list":{"0":"post-121224","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-jessica-pegula","11":"tag-kim-pegula","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-tennis","14":"tag-tennis-section","15":"tag-terry-pegula","16":"tag-us-open"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}