"There is this stereotype about wife of an athlete, I don't fit into that": When Novak Djokovic's wife Jelena discussed relationship's hardest time
There's no denying that Novak Djokovic and his wife Jelena are one of tennis' power couples right now. However, there was a time when they faced some difficulties in their relationship.
Djokovic and Jelena have known each other since childhood as they attended the same high school in their native Serbia. The couple dated for eight years before they got engaged in Monte Carlo in September 2013.
The duo later got married in a ceremony held in the Montenegrin seaside town of Sveti Stefan in July 2014. They have been happily together ever since and have two children, a six-year-old daughter named Tara and an eight-year-old son named Stefan.
Jelena Djokovic once gave an interview to Graham Bensinger in 2020 and shed light on the hardest time of their relationship. She claimed she wasn't given enough credit and was trying to compete with the 24-time Grand Slam champion in a battle of ego.
"I think this is gonna be brave to say to millions of people watching but I was trying to compete with him because I felt like, 'I'm also deserving and I'm not getting enough credit for what I'm doing because I'm doing it more in the backstage.' My ego was there battling also, an internal battle, because I always felt like I can express so much more but I have to do it quietly," she said (at 7:00).
Jelena added that there was always a stereotype about athletes' wives as if they had to carry a certain type of personality. However, she never really fit into that and was judged as a result.
"Basically, as a woman, you are not allowed to speak up a lot, you are not allowed to show up a lot," Jelena said (at 7:30). "There is this stereotype about who is the wife of an athlete, how she should look like, how she should behave, and I don't fit very well into that stereotype. I am glad I don't because I don't need to. But it was hard because I was judged because of it."
The businesswoman also revealed how she tried to conform to the stereotype by engaging in topics that were not her area of interest. She soon realized, however, that she needed to show others that not all athletes' wives are like that and followed her mantra.
"I was trying to conform at first because I was meant to be interested in fashion, I was meant to be interested in looks, you know, different kinds of things and that's all fun, but it just doesn't inspire me," Jelena Djokovic said (at 7:54).
"So, I had to invent my place and that was a competition like, 'I'm gonna prove you know.' I'm gonna prove something that we can be at other things than just a girlfriend or just a wife. Always I am the wife, but now I'm proudly wearing that title rather than feeling, 'Well, here we go. Wife! Okay, let me sit and smile.' So, it's a great transformation for me," she continued.
Novak Djokovic married Jelena less than a week after winning 2nd Wimbledon title
Novak Djokovic married his then-fiance Jelena Ristic less than a week after winning his second Wimbledon title in 2014.
Djokovic won his first title at SW19 in 2011, and he repeated the feat three years later. He defeated the likes of Andrey Golubev, Radek Stepanek, Gilles Simon, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Marin Cilic and Grigor Dimitrov to reach the championship match. The top seed faced arch-rival Roger Federer there and defeated the Swiss in a five-set thriller to lift the grasscourt Major trophy once again.
Since then, the Serb has won Wimbledon on five more occasions: in 2015, 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022. He reached the final in 2023 but was defeated by the young Spaniard, Carlos Alcaraz.