Billie Jean King, 82, says she now identifies as a lesbian
Billie Jean King, 82, says she now identifies as a lesbian
Billie Jean King, one of tennis's most important figures, now identifies as a lesbian, she told the Guardian in an interview published on 9 November 2026. She spoke by video call from her home in New York. King is 82. Her wife is Ilana Kloss, a former tennis player.
King's record is built on trophies. A Grand Slam is one of the four biggest tournaments in the sport: the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open. King won 39 of them. Twelve were in singles, 16 in doubles, where two players share a side, and 11 in mixed doubles, where a man and a woman partner each other. She won Wimbledon 20 times across those disciplines, a record matched only by Martina Navratilova.
Her fight for fairness was as important as her forehand. King led the push for equal prize money for men and women, a battle that changed how the sport pays its players. In 1970, driven largely by her, a group of nine women known as the Original 9 founded the first major women's professional tour. They signed symbolic $1 contracts with Gladys Heldman, the publisher of World Tennis magazine. Their story is told in a documentary called Give Me the Ball!
Three years later, in 1973, King beat Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes, an exhibition match played for public interest rather than a title. The contest drew huge attention around the world. It is still the match most people remember when they hear her name.
King was born Billie Jean Moffitt to a firefighter father and a housewife mother. Her brother became a Major League Baseball pitcher. She was first introduced to tennis when Susan Williams, a classmate in her fifth-grade class in Long Beach, California, told her about the game when King was 11. King was later married to lawyer and sports promoter Larry King.
Education was another long road. King left college to focus on tennis. In May 2026, the Guardian reported that she had graduated at 82, earning her degree 65 years after she first started college. Her graduation was a reminder that her goals have never followed a neat timetable.
Her career has always been about pushing against limits, both on court and in the rules that governed it. Her latest interview adds a personal chapter to that history, and it arrives while her name remains tied to the wider fight for equal treatment in sport.
King also became the first woman athlete to earn more than $100,000 in prize money, a milestone that came as the women's game was still fighting for its place on the same stage as the men's.
