Nearly a year after Olympian Adam
Rippon and Jussi-Pekka Kajaala announced their engagement, the couple
said on social media that they spontaneously got married on New
Year's Eve in California.
“SURPRISE WE ARE MARRIED,” Rippon
captioned an image of the couple with their dog on Instagram. “One
afternoon JP and I looked at each other and said the very classic
*romantic* phrase of 'let's just go do it now.' So we did. It was
just the three of us and it was perfect 1/31/21.”
Rippon, who won a bronze medal as part
of the figure skating team event at the 2018 Winter Olympics,
announced in February that they had gotten engaged while he visited
Kajaala in Finland.
The couple, who met in 2018 on Tinder,
were separated for months as Kajaala remained in Finland waiting for
his immigrant visa.
Rippon told PEOPLE that the wedding
took them by surprise.
“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,” Rippon
said. “And I guess we didn't even know if we were giving
ourselves a heads up. Listen, we're unpredictable.”
After the couple got engaged, Rippon
told PEOPLE: “I'm excited to marry JP because he's just the
best. He's kind, he's funny, and he's just as beautiful on the inside
as he is on the out (which is a lot). He's my cheerleader and I'm
his. I just love him a lot.”
Rippon added that both men proposed.
“We did it at the same time so we
both got to be the one who proposed,” he said.