Junior and Lauren Holiday are a real power couple in the world of sports.

When they were both students at UCLA in 2008, NBA point guard Jrue met Lauren, who used to be a big star in American soccer. They got married in 2013 and have a son named Hendrix and a girl named Jrue Tyler.

During the time they were together, Jrue and Lauren both did very well in their sports. Soon after being picked up by the 76ers, Jrue played for a short time for UCLA before moving on to the Pelicans. He has been with the Milwaukee Bucks since 2020 and helped them win both the NBA title and the Olympic gold medal in 2020.

Laure joined the U.S. women’s national soccer team after playing club soccer with the Pal Blues, the Boston Breakers, and FC Kansas City while she was at UCLA. At the FIFA Women’s World Cup, they won Gold (2008), Silver (2012), and Bronze (2015). She won the title of Female Athlete of the Year for U.S. Soccer in 2014.

Lauren chose to spend more time with her family and quit professional soccer in 2015. Because of that, they’ve added a new member to their family, started a program to work for social justice, and kept up their public support for each other.

“God, family, and basketball have always been my top priorities,” Jrue told Andscape in 2019. I think it’s a good thing to put kids before hoops. No matter what happened after that, God kept blessing me. I don’t think I could play without my family and friends by my side.

Find out everything you need to know about Jrue Holiday and Lauren Holiday’s connection by reading on.

They met at UCLA.

Jrue and Lauren both went to UCLA and in 2008, they met on the basketball and soccer grounds.

At a UCLA women’s basketball game, a fan asked Jrue for an autograph, and it was his teammate Colleen So. That’s how they met, based on an interview Jrue gave to ESP in 2015.

He sat down, and Lauren whispered to him, “Don’t worry, you’re cuter than Darren is.” He told the source this.

Because she was older than him, Jrue thought that was really cool. When we met, I was a rookie and I think she was a junior. We became friends even though we were both seeing other people. We started dating after I was drafted, but not before becoming friends.

They got married in 2013.

Jrue and Lauren got married in Malibu, California, after being engaged for a year. A lot of former 76ers players, like Spencer Hawes, Royal Ivey, Andre Iguodala, and Evan Turner, went to Jrue’s beach wedding. Jason Richardson and his wife Jackie were also there.

In a recent interview with The Philadelphia Inquirer, Lauren talked about how excited she was to be engaged in the months before her wedding. “Even though I’m not very good at planning weddings, the thought of spending the rest of my life with him has been amazing.”

They have two little kids together.

Their daughter, Jrue Tyler, was born in North Carolina in September 2016. This was just a few weeks before they had surgery to remove a growth from Tyler’s brain. In 2020, Hendrix was born to them.

When Lauren and Jrue post on social media, they often write sweet things about each other and share cute family photos. Jrue wrote to Lauren on Mother’s Day in 2022, “This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen: you as a mother.” “Your love for our kids knows no bounds, and I will always back that up.”

Lauren got the terrible news that she had a brain tumor while she was pregnant with their daughter.

ABC News reports that Lauren was identified with a meningioma, a type of brain tumor, after having terrible migraines while she was six months pregnant with their daughter. The world was told by Jrue in September 2016 that he would not be playing at the start of the 2016–2017 season with the New Orleans Pelicans in order to help his wife with her recovery.

“My family comes before basketball,” Jrue, 26, told NOLA.com. Being able to play this game and be where I am now is a gift, but my wife is the most important thing to me. She is the most important thing.

In the end, doctors chose to induce labor early so that Lauren could have her important brain surgery at Duke University Hospital in October 2016.

Lauren said that her five-month-old daughter helped her get through her health problems after giving birth and having surgery to remove a brain tumor.

As she wrote on Instagram, seeing this smile every day helped her remember that good things do come in the morning. It might not come today or even in a month, but it will. There must be something better than this in heaven because I’m not happy here on earth.

They set up a charity that works for social fairness.

Jrue and his wife started a program for social justice in July 2020 with the money he would have made playing in the NBA in 2019–2020. Through an Instagram post, he explained how the Jrue and Lauren Holiday Social Justice Impact Fund would give money to Black-led groups in Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Indianapolis.

Jrue said, “I have pledged the rest of my 2020 NBA salary as a progressive step toward fighting systemic racism and social and economic inequality that continues to keep Black communities from moving up.”

When it came down to it, he told ESPN, “My wife and I were talking about what we could do to kind of further this movement and progression and being able to help out our community and just being able to help.”

Later that same month, Jrue wore a mask that said “Say Their Names,” which was a rallying cry from the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.

They support each other’s work goals in public.

Jrue and Lauren have been there for each other since they were college partners. In a 2021 feature in the New York Times, Jrue said that his wife does more than just support him; she also gives him good advice when he asks for it.

In our family, she is without a doubt the best athlete and champion. This is very important to me to hear from her. Junior agreed with Lauren’s feedback and backed it up. The athlete said that Lauren was the one who pushed him to go back to the NBA after the pandemic started.

There is also help given and received. Jrue still recognizes Lauren’s achievements, even though she is no longer playing soccer. He shocked Lauren in November 2022 when he put up a video on YouTube announcing that she would be inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame.

They were part of an insurance case worth thirteen million dollars.

A story from February 2022 in The New York Times says that Jrue and Lauren were two of many professional athletes who sued Morgan Stanley, saying that the company had lost $13 million because of bad investments.

The Times reports that even though Jrue and Lauren were not named as victims in the case against four traders who were accused of ripping off professional athletes in March 2023, the facts of the case supported what they said.

People have been racist toward Jrue, and Lauren has spoken out about it.

In June 2020, after the Black Lives Matter protests and the murder of George Floy, Lauren wrote an essay for The Players’ Tribune about how her husband has been racist many times during their marriage.

The soccer star remembered a lot of stressful events, but she chose to talk about the one that made her speak out. Lauren was in a car with Jrue’s sister when she was pulled over by a police officer. She quickly realized she had forgotten to bring her license. After she asked him to bring her something, the police handcuffed Jrue for no clear reason.

Indeed, this was the case even though the police officer already knew that Jrue was my husband, where he was, and why he was there. Even though no one had ever told us why we were pulled over. No matter what, Jrue’s approach could not have been more kind or careful. “All the police officer saw was this big Black man getting out of a car,” Lauren wrote.