‘Heated Rivalry’ Has Nothing on the Real-Life Rivals-to-Wives Tale of These Olympians

“The rivalry between the American and Canadian hockey teams is very intense, so this really was a bit of a Romy and Juliet situation,” Timpson says in the video. “They faced many of the same challenges that we see in Heated Rivalry. They couldn’t spend time together very often, they had to balance their focus on their careers and their teams with their relationship and they couldn’t be fully out.”

While they couldn’t be fully public with their relationship, Timpson does point out that Chu and Ouellette were not as deeply closeted as the two characters in Heated Rivalry.

Though Timpson doesn’t mention it, both Chu and Ouellette wore the number 13 on their respective hockey jerseys, as we have previously reported. They now have two children, Liv and Tessa.

While Ouellette and Chu were some of the earliest examples of cross-country rivalry-slash-romances in women’s hockey, they are not the only ones. In 2018, Team USA captain Meghan Duggan married Canadian hockey star Gillian Apps, with several of their teammates serving as bridesmaids.

And, in 2015, Canadian Olympic gold medalist Jayna Hefford welcomed a second child with Kathleen Kauth, a former team USA member with whom she had been in a relationship for a decade. As with Chu and Ouellette, the two played against each other several times atthe Olympics and other international competitions.

While women’s hockey is full of real-life sapphic relationships, which should definitely get the television treatment, the same cannot be said of men’s hockey (at least publicly! No one knows what’s happening behind closed doors.) As of 2025, there are no out gay players competing in the NHL; Luke Prokop, who was under contract with the Nashville Predators, came out in 2021, but never played a game with the team and is currently in the American Hockey League, the minor league version of the NHL.

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