College sweethearts! Joe Burrow started dating girlfriend Olivia Holzmacher years before the Cincinnati Bengals played the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LVI.
The football player met Holzmacher while attending The Ohio State University. While the pair both kicked off their time as Buckeyes in 2015, they didn’t start dating until 2017.
“10/10 … 1 being the best,” she joked in a caption from the field at Ohio Stadium in August 2017.
One year later, they celebrated their first anniversary.
“Three hundred sixty five days xoxo,” she captioned a black-and-white snap via Instagram in August 2018.
Earlier that year, Burrow graduated from OSU early. He subsequently enrolled at Louisiana State University to be the quarterback for the Tigers.
“The first chapter was a pretty great one,” he wrote in May 2018 via Instagram alongside a series of photos from his three years at OSU. “Now it’s time to write the next one.”
Despite the distance, the pair stayed together, and Holzmacher, who graduated from OSU in 2019, cheered for Burrow as he won the National Championship with LSU in January 2020. Several months later, he was drafted first overall by the Cincinnati Bengals in the NFL draft.
“Tonight a new chapter starts for you!” she gushed on social media at the time. “Thankful to be by your side joe and to be a part of the the past three seasons. I’ve had the best experiences and met the best people along the way. So excited for what the future holds. Tonight will be once in a lifetime night for you.”
Fast-forward to 2022 and Burrow appeared in his first Super Bowl — and the Bengals’ first Big Game since 1988.
“Coming into this week, game prep, it just feels like another week,” he told the press in February 2022. ”Obviously, it’s the Super Bowl and we’re gonna have to try to eliminate as many distractions as we can, but it feels normal.”
Holzmacher, meanwhile, cheered him on, posting a snap from California days ahead of the Super Bowl at SoFi stadium. (The Bengals lost to the Los Angeles Rams.)
Scroll through for a timeline of their relationship: