(L-R) Hayes Johnson proposes to Missy Franklin at the Lake Lanier Islands Resort on Sept. 22, 2018 in Georgia.
After diving into an Olympic swimming pool and emerging with a gold medal five times, Missy Franklin will soon be taking a different kind of plunge.
The 23-year-old announced her engagement to boyfriend Hayes Johnson in an Instagram post Sunday morning.
“Thank you for making this the easiest answer to any question I’ve ever been asked,” Franklin said in the post. “Yes. Yes. Yes. A million times over.”
Johnson was also a swimmer, competing at the 2008 and 2012 U.S. Olympic Team Trials and also winning an NCAA team championship while at the University of Texas in 2010. Franklin was also a star in college for Cal, maintaining her amateur status for two seasons after making her Olympic debut at the Olympic Games London 2012 as a 17-year-old.
Franklin won five medals in London, four of them gold. Her gold medal in the 200-meter backstroke was the first for an American woman in that event in 40 years. Her time of 2:04.06 remains the world record. For her remarkable achievements in 2012, she was named World and American Swimmer of the Year by Swimming World.
After turning pro in 2015 with four individual NCAA national championships to her name, Franklin won the gold medal in Rio in the 4x200 freestyle. Until Katie Ledecky broke it in 2017, she held the record for most world championship medals with 11.
Todd Kortemeier is a sportswriter, editor and children’s book author from Minneapolis. He is a contributor to TeamUSA.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.
