Chris Evert and British tennis player John Lloyd, a former World No. 23 and Australian Open finalist, was one of the earliest power couples tennis had known. The pair married in 1979 and stayed married for eight long years before announcing their retirement in 1987.
Before Evert married Lloyd, she was engaged to American tennis great Jimmy Connors, dating him until 1974. After the break-up, the former World No. 1 remained single for a while until she read an interview from Lloyd, where he talked about the loneliness of life as a tennis pro.
Having related to the message, Chris Evert approached the Brit though the help of one of her friends, and by her own admission, it was nearly love at first sight for the couple.
Trending
"I had a girlfriend ask him if he would want to go out with her and me to Tramp in London, to go out dancing. Yeah, he was all over that. That was our first date, and we hit it off," Evert revealed in an interview with ELLE magazine in 2011.
Unfortunately, when the relationship ultimately ended in divorce, Evert's parents were left sad and "disappointed," with her dad even refusing to talk to her for a while. That, in fact, turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as Martina Navratilova, one of her arch-rivals, invited Evert out for a holiday in Aspen during that time.
There, she ended up meeting Andy Hill, an Olympic ski champion who also became her second husband.
"Both my parents were really sad at the divorce, and disappointed. My mom wrote me a letter. My dad didn't talk to me for a while. Life is so funny. It was because my dad wasn't talking to me that Martina invited me to Aspen," Evert further said.
Evert and Mill had three sons during their marriage, and remained together until 2006, when their divorce was finalized.
"It was doomed from the start" - Chris Evert on her marriage with John Lloyd
In the interview with ELLE, Chris Evert shared her thoughts on her marriage to John Lloyd, stating that she had known even then that it was "doomed" to end in divorce. As for why, the 18-time Grand Slam champion pointed to the rigorous demands of the tennis pro life, saying:
"It was doomed from the start, because he was on the men's tour, and I was on the women's tour, and we never saw each other. I was married to my tennis. My aspiration was to become number one. I had no emotion left when I got home."
After her divorce from Andy Mill, Chris Evert married golfer Greg Norman in 2008, but the couple divorced the very next year in December.
