Andy Murray‘s groundbreaking sporting achievements speak for themselves – and now Express.co.uk is sharing an insight into the “feminist” relationship that the tennis ace shares with wife Kim. The pair were first introduced by Kim’s dad Nigel – a top women’s tennis coach and head of the women’s section of the LTA (Lawn Tennis Association) way back in 2005.
Kim attended the same private school as ex-This Morning star Holly Willoughby – Burgess Hill in Sussex, where fees exceed £26,000 per year – although Holly was a few years above in age. The relationship between Kim and Andy quickly heated up and within a year, she’d secretly skived off school to support him in San Jose, California, as he competed in a tournament.
She’d assumed he was “never going to win” so she could safely jet off and be “back at school on Monday” – but how wrong she was. That tournament turned out to be the first one a young Andy ever won, sparking off a stratospheric rise to fame.
Kim hurriedly put in a phone call to her mum when she realised he wasn’t going to be defeated as easily as she’d thought, and asked her to claim to the school that she’d come down with a vomiting bug. However, her cover was blown when Andy’s win made the front page of a newspaper, and he was pictured running into the crowd and kissing her to celebrate.
Despite that moment causing her blushes, the relationship intensified on the same scale as Andy’s career – and they eventually tied the knot in 2015. The year prior to their fairytale wedding, Andy had made the controversial decision to hire a female tennis coach – something which attracted amazement.
However, Amelie Mauresmo had won multiple Grand Slam singles titles and Andy adamantly wrote online at the time that she was “the right person for the job”.
He added that it concerned him to see she “wasn’t always treated the same as men in similar jobs” and that he felt he had to speak out.
One reason that Andy’s marriage to Kim – a writer and artist – has thrived is his unapologetic status as a “feminist” in a sporting world that can often be biased against women.
He previously commented that the level of sexism he’d encountered was “unreal”, but that he wasn’t about to stay quiet about it.
When Andy was congratulated at the 2016 Rio Olympics for becoming “the first person ever to win two Olympic tennis gold medals”, he was quick to point out that female players Serena and Venus Williams had both achieved that earlier than him, winning “about four each”.
Then Indian Wells Tennis Gardens CEO Raymond Moore was forced to resign after making controversial sexist comments just before the women’s final at the Miami Open back in 2017.
He incited fury when he claimed that women’s tennis “rides on the coattails” of the men’s game, and that female players should “go down every night on [their] knees and thank God that Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal were born”.
No man was more publicly indignant than Andy, who exclaimed that his comments had come just before a “great women’s final”, where 16,000 fans had been gathered in the stadium to watch the females compete.
At the press conference, he retorted: “I think there should be equal pay, 100%, at all combined events”, adding that the disgraced CEO’s comments were “strange”, “disappointing” and made no sense.
Meanwhile, in 2018, when footballer Ada Hegerberg won the women’s Ballon d’Or award, she was quizzed by one of the ceremony’s hosts on whether she knew how to twerk.
“Another example of the ridiculous sexism that still exists in sport. Why do women still have to put up with that s**t?” Andy raged on Instagram at the time.
He added: “I’ve been involved in sport my whole life and the level of sexism is unreal.”
Fortunately, that isn’t the case in Andy’s relationship with Kim, as he actively supports her career ambitions and is a committed family man with the pair’s four children.
The Wimbledon action is due to kick off today, when Andy will make his decision about whether he’s fit enough to join his July 2 first round match against the Czech Republic’s Tomas Machac.
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