The First Married Couple in the Olympic Games

Airing: Episode 480, Week of Saturday February 2, 2019
As Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, we visit with an Olympic couple living right here in California that found true love.
It was 1976 the Summer Games of Montreal, the first since Munich the last chance perhaps for Bill Leach. His younger bride fellow Olympic kayaker Julie, at 19 figured it might come again but the Olympic boycott of 80 would follow. So this would be their only Olympian.
It seems like it was yesterday and it’s 30 years ago. It’s just stunning to think about that.
yeah it was the highlight of our life, it seems like a very long time ago.
It seems like ancient history but they experienced it together. Bill and Julie you see didn’t meet at the Olympics. There were three couples that year and one was a coach and an athlete and the others were runners on the track team. They qualified after they did so officially they were the first married couple to go to the Olympic Games.
They didn’t meet at the Olympics which is pretty common. Now they look back, winters, the summer games. They still stir something inside. All in all there are several dozen Olympians winter and summer who live in Southern California but don’t call them former Olympians as leach says once an Olympian always an Olympian.
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