Olympic Figure Skater Adam Rippon Is Engaged! Meet His Fiancé, Jussi-Pekka Kajaala
He's almost a foot taller!
YouTube During the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, we saw incredible talent from around the world in sports like curling, ice hockey, figure skating, luge, skiing, and speed skating, among others.
The Olympics also made the world finally take note of ridiculously talented athletes, including Chloe Kim, Mikaela Shiffrin, Nathan Chen, Gus Kenworthy, and siblings Alex and Maia Shibutani.
We were also introduced to one of America’s sweethearts, Adam Rippon. An Olympic figure skater, he won a bronze medal as part of the figure skating team event.
Along with other awards early in his career, he later went on to win season 26 of Dancing with the Stars. In November 2018, he announced he would retire from competitive figure skating and went on to appear as a guest host on RuPaul’s Drag Race and in Taylor Swift’s music video for “You Need to Calm Down.”
Now, Adam Rippon is moving on to the next chapter of his life with his new fiancé, Jussi-Pekka Kajaala.
Who is Adam Rippon's fiancé, Jussi-Pekka Kajaala?
Read on for everything you need to know about the newly engaged couple!
They met on Tinder.
When Rippon was in Scandinavia in 2017, luck was on his side when he and Kajaala matched on the dating app.
In April 2018, Rippon revealed the two had “been talking for the past seven months” and “started to hang out a little bit more, because we were both really busy.” They eventually made it official in March 2018.
They have quite a large height difference.
In an interview with Page Six, Rippon talked about how Kajaala is almost a foot taller than him:
“I’m like 5’7” but he’s 6’4”. It’s like he’s wearing platforms all the time but he’s just, like, not. I never will lose him in a crowd. If he does wander off, or I wander off, which is more likely the case, I can always find him right away. It’s just nice to be around somebody tall. It does make you feel very short," Rippon said.
They’ve learned to tackle linguistic challenges.
Because Kajaala is from Finland, there’s sometimes confusion over what different words mean.
As Rippon told Page Six, “We haven’t really had any miscommunication because, TBH [to be honest], in Europe, they speak English better than we do. He says so many funny, quirky things, and I end up usually stealing them all. He did not fully understand the meaning of the word ‘quite.’ He thought it meant ‘not really.’ You know, we were kind of flirting back and forth, and he was like, ‘Do you like me?’ and I was like, ‘I actually like you quite a lot,’ and he’s like, ‘Quite a lot? Yeah, well, I don’t really like you that much either.’”
Rippon spoke about marrying Kajaala in 2019.
In April 2019, he told Us Weekly his thoughts on marrying Kajaala, saying, “You know, you never know. It would be nice. My whole family loves him and he’s just a great guy. My family loves him, my mom loves him.”
He’s not an athlete.
Unlike Rippon, Kajaala works at a real estate business at Kasslin LKV.
When People asked him if his boyfriend would ever join him on the ice, Rippon said, “He has not been skating for years.”
Rippon broke up with his ex-boyfriend the summer before the Olympics.
He told People, “This was my third Olympic cycle and I was like, ‘I cannot have any regrets.’ Everything was great with [my ex], he was a great guy, but I felt like I really needed to focus on myself. I was lucky that my ex-boyfriend is such a nice person that we’re still friends now.”
On Feb. 10, Rippon revealed that he and Kajaala got engaged.
The figure skater revealed the joyful news via his Instagram, posting a collage of pics of him and his hunky new fiancé along with a sweet caption about their engagement and his time in Finland:
"JP and I didn’t get to see each other for almost all of 2020 because of the pandemic. When there was finally a chance for me to go and see him in Finland, I jumped at it. I was there for a little over two months.
While I was there, I would tell him about five million jokes that I would want to pitch during my 5 hour zoom meetings for our NBC comedy (hi, @billy4529 and @susankittenplan ). And he would drive me into the Finnish forest where I would attempt to try and 'help' him shovel snow so he could keep working on the cottage he’s building.
So, in between all that and binging the entire 4 seasons of The Crown, we bought ourselves some rings and said that magic word.. “duh!” We got ~*engaged*~"
Rippon also issued a statement about his engagement, telling People, "I'm excited to marry JP because he's just the best. He's kind, he's funny, and he's just as beautiful on the inside as he is on the out (which is a lot). He's my cheerleader and I'm his. I just love him a lot."
Congrats to the happy couple!
Samantha Maffucci is an editor for YourTango who focuses on writing trending news and entertainment pieces. In her free time, you can find her obsessing about cats, wine, and all things Vanderpump Rules.