Wayne Gretzky Met His Wife Janet Jones After Catching 'Dance Fever'
Wayne proposed over the phone, but he has never "phoned it in" for his relationship with Janet.
Published Feb. 28 2025, 4:17 p.m. ET
When most people think of hockey legends, they think of Bobby Orr, Bobby Hull, Patrick Roy, or, of course, Wayne Gretzky. The Canadian National Hockey League (NHL) superstar player retired in 1999, settling in for a more domestic life with his wife and kids.
Wayne has been married to his wife, Janet Jones Gretzky, for over three decades, and they have several kids together. Here's what we know about their long-lasting relationship and the family they've created together.
Wayne Gretzky and his wife Janet Jones have been married for 30 years.
Although Wayne is best known for his sports superstardom, his wife has some celebrity of her own. She's an actress who, according to her IMDb, has appeared in projects like A League of Their Own, Police Academy 5, and Alpha Dog.
She also performed on the musical TV show Dance Fever. And that appearance would change the course of her life forever.
At just 19 years old, she was a performer on the show. Another 19-year-old was serving as a judge: Wayne. They met through Dance Fever and then fell head over heels for one another during a Los Angeles Lakers game in 1987. Janet worked as a model before turning her attention to acting full-time. But after meeting Wayne, she kept her eyes on a different prize.
In an interview on In Depth With Graham Bensinger, Wayne explained, "The rest was history."
On the This Past Weekend podcast, Wayne mused, “We both love sports. It’s wonderful that her and I watch hockey together, baseball, football, and basketball. She loves going to games. We think the same way ... we were born 16 days apart. We have a lot in common.”
Wayne and Janet share five kids together, including model daughter Paulina.
Yet Janet's legacy at home is impressively prolific in an entirely different way.
In the midst of Wayne and Janet's very different but booming careers, they started a family and just kept growing it. They welcomed their first daughter, Paulina, in 1988. Paulina is a successful model and actor with over a million Instagram followers. They welcomed son Ty in 1990, son Trevor in 1992, and son Tristan in 2000. Their second daughter and last child, Emma, was born in 2003.
According to People, Wayne proposed to Janet over the phone, but he never seemed to be "phoning it in" with their relationship. They tied the knot back in 1988 and endured through the decades as Hollywood rose and fell around them.
It's not easy to raise a family, especially a big one. But to do that while nurturing two very different and attention-heavy careers while maintaining a marriage?
That's a legacy almost worth more praise than the professional legacies each will leave behind someday. Although those are nothing to sneeze at either.