Elena Delle Donne came out as gay with a splash in a Vogue magazine release timed for the arrival of the most valuable pro woman basketball player in Rio de Janeiro to star on the U.S. Olympic team.
Delle Donne's fiancée, Amanda Clifton, a former collegiate basketball player and who will be attending the games in Rio, is briefly mentioned in an online version of the Vogue article on the basketball star's first public acknowledgement of her sexuality.
"She and her fiancée, Amanda Clifton, keep apartments in both Chicago and Wilmington (Delaware)," said Vogue. They run a basketball camp for girls together.
The couple, though, had appeared together in social media posts before the article.
"It was just one of those articles where they came into my home, spent a couple days with me, and Amanda is a huge part of my life," Delle Donne told reporters in Rio de Janeiro this week, said ESPN.
"So to leave her out wouldn't have made any sense. It's not a coming out article or anything. I've been with her for a very long time now, and people who are close to me know that, and that's that."
ESPN noted that the couple was engaged on June 2.
Delle Donne, who plays for the Chicago Sky during the WNBA season, said she and Clifton will continue to speak little about their private life despite the Vogue article.
"As the future keeps moving on, I don't plan on having our relationship out in the public and all this media on it," Delle Donne said, per ESPN. "But obviously there's excitement right now because people see it for the first time."
SB Nation's OutSports' writer Jim Buzinski said the Delle Donne's news, though, may not make such a splash because of her gender. Brittany Griner, another WNBA most valuable player, came out as gay in 2013.
"Delle Donne is a star, the second pick in the 2013 WNBA draft behind Griner and last season's league MVP, yet I imagine most people will yawn at the news," said Buzinski. "Out female athletes have never gotten the same amount of attention as a man, for various sociological reasons. Imagine the news avalanche had the first two picks in an NBA draft both been gay."