The advent of social media means that we have opportunities to see inside the lives of star athletes like never before, with many of the NFL’s best and brightest young players broadcasting their every move to millions of adoring fans. The flip side of that coin means that members of an athlete’s inner circle of friends and family have excellent chances to build a famous brand in their own right, using their connections to springboard themselves to stardom.
From their humble beginnings as students at Ohio State University to one of the NFL’s biggest power couples, the story of Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow and his longtime girlfriend Olivia Holzmacher in their rise to superstardom is one for the ages. Here’s everything you need to know about Holzmacher, her beau and their love story.
In The Beginning
While Burrow is one of the hottest topics in the NFL today, a burgeoning superstar who’s set to break all kinds of records when he receives his first contract extension in the next couple of years, it wasn’t always that way.
Burrow rode the bench for three years at Ohio State to begin his college career, taking part in just ten games (almost all of them blowouts) as he waited in the wings behind entrenched starter J.T. Barrett.
It was during these humble beginnings that Burrow and Holzmacher met… well before the Heisman Trophy, the NFL money or the Super Bowl appearance.
Burrow finally got an opportunity to stake his claim as a starter ahead of the 2018 season, but he transferred to Louisiana State University following the Buckeyes spring game, when he realized that Dwayne Haskins was going to win the starting role.
No Distance Too Far
Unlike Burrow, Holzmacher remained enrolled at Ohio State for the 2018-19 school year, concentrating her studies in data analytics and social sciences. While Burrow was amidst his national championship season with the Tigers, Holzmacher received her degree in Columbus, rooting for her man from afar as she began a career in the analytics department for supermarket chain Kroger.
Although he’s established himself as one of the best young quarterbacks in the NFL, Burrow began his professional career as an underdog as he joined the Bengals, then the worst team in the NFL, suffering a catastrophic knee injury during his rookie year before elevating the team to a Super Bowl appearance in his sophomore season.
His relationship with Holzmacher, similarly, has followed an unorthodox trajectory, as they managed to balance the challenge of living nearly 1,000 miles apart during the two years Burrow spent at LSU.
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Look How Far They’ve Come
The stars aligned for Burrow and Holzmacher during the 2019 NFL season, as the Bengals sputtered to a league-worst 2-14 record, securing them the top pick in the 2020 NFL draft. With Burrow fresh off one of the best seasons in the history of college football, adding a national championship and a Heisman Trophy to his awards case, the choice of who to draft couldn’t have been hard for the Bengals to make.
Holzmacher’s blossoming career took a similar path: she grew up half an hour north of Cincinnati in Mason, Ohio, and moved back home following graduation. With Burrow right down the road, spending a good chunk of two years apart ended up paying off for the young couple.
Just as Burrow has seen his legend continue to grow during his first three seasons in the league, Holzmacher has branched out too, picking up more than 144 thousand followers on Instagram over the past few years. While the family members and significant others of some NFL players flash their VIP-adjacent status on social media constantly, like Kansas City Chiefs’ quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ wife and brother, Holzmacher takes a more low-key approach, building her brand organically with content that centers around her own life instead of Burrow’s. With that said, she leaves no doubts about who she’s rooting for once the NFL season picks up, posting pictures with extravagant Bengals-themed outfits at most of the games she manages to catch.
