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BANG Showbiz English
Adam Rippon married Jussi-Pekka Kajaala in a spur-of-the-moment wedding on New Year’s Eve 2021.
The 32-year-old retired figure skater – who had been in a relationship with real estate broker Jussi-Pekka, 34, since they matched on dating app Tinder in 2018 – explained that they had “always wanted to do something simple” for their wedding and only decided to get married when a local officiant had a slot available for that day.
He said: “I think everybody knew that we were going to do it and I think nobody knew if we were going to give them a heads up or not. And I guess we didn’t even know if we were giving ourselves a heads up. Listen, we’re unpredictable. We always wanted to do something simple and just the two of us. And so we were looking at different options of what we could do and so obviously when you do that, the next best thing that you can do is you reach out to [California marriage officiant] Maria and you ask Maria: ‘When is her next availability for a wedding?’ And she goes, ‘I have availability this week, but I also have something today.’ And so then I said, ‘Listen, Maria, we’re on our way.’ “
The former ‘Dancing with the Stars’ contestant – who won the 2016 U.S. National Championships for figure skating – added that he and Jussi-Pekka had wanted to get married “for a while” and decided to go through with their nuptials with little planning to “just have it be finished.”
He told PEOPLE: “”We’ve been waiting to do it for a while and we always were like, ‘Let’s just go and do it and just have it be finished and we can finally be married.”
Jussi-Pekka also explained that they wanted to make “something special” out of the 31st December, which is “not usually a big deal” for them.
He said: “We had some plans for the date, but then we just decided to do it sooner because New Year’s Eve is not a big thing for us. We’re in bed like 10:30. So then we decided that, oh, maybe going to use this day for something special like this and now we have a great meaning for that day.”
