Jun. 25—A ring, a poolside proposal and (fortunately) a quick “Yes!” from Olympic gold medal swimmer Lilly King was all it took for Phippsburg native James Wells to become an internet sensation.
At the U.S. Olympic swimming trials on June 20 at Indianapolis’ Lucas Oil Stadium, Wells popped the question after using his connections to gain access to the restricted pool deck area. NBC’s cameras captured the moment, which also drew a small crowd of media.
By the following morning, the story and video had gone viral. King and Wells — a former standout swimmer at Morse High in Bath — later appeared on NBC’s “Today” show.
“It’s been a pretty crazy couple of days,” Wells said with a laugh on Monday in a phone interview with the Press Herald.
Wells, 32, and King, 27, began dating four years ago. The couple live together in Bloomington, Indiana, where they share a home with their cat, Kiki, and golden retriever, Pippin.
“So I was pretty confident (she would say yes),” Wells said.
Wells and King were standout swimmers at Indiana University, although their collegiate careers did not overlap.
Wells, a two-time Maine Sunday Telegram swimmer of the year while competing for Morse and the Long Reach Swim Club in Bath, graduated from Indiana in 2014.
He competed at the 2012, 2016 and 2021 Olympic trials, specializing in the backstroke.
King grew up in Evansville, Indiana. She competed at Indiana from 2015 to 2019 and won two gold medals at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She then added two silvers and a bronze at the 2021 Tokyo Games.
When Wells proposed on June 20, King had just finished second to Kate Douglass in the 200-meter breaststroke. King needed a late surge in that race to claim the second and final Olympic qualifying spot.
King will also swim the 100-meter breaststroke in Paris after winning that event earlier in the U.S. trials.
“The emotional release from making the team is so crazy, just getting on the team after four years of work, and she was having a great time all week and I was 100% confident she was going to make the team in the 200 as well,” Wells said. “I wanted to make sure she was done with her events and had already made the team.”
Wells used some of his old swimming connections to get himself on the pool deck. He also spoke to the media ahead of time.
“They were fully up for this moment and they got me behind the scenes,” he said.
The Paris Games will mark King’s third Olympics. In 2016, she won gold in the 100-meter breaststroke and again as part of the winning 4×100 medley relay team. In the 2021 Tokyo Games, she earned silver in the medley relay and 200-meter breaststroke, as well as bronze in the 100-meter breaststroke.
Wells said he met King when he was swimming professionally and training at Indiana University. After attending a mutual friend’s wedding, they started texting each other. Wells and King would then go on an occasional date “every six months,” or so when their paths crossed at a big national meet.
In the summer of 2020, King visited Maine with Wells’ former IU roommate and close friend Cody Miller.
“We started dating officially then. She actually asked me out,” said Wells, who at the time was working in electrical design at Bath Iron Works. “We dated for that year up to the 2021 Olympic trials, which I got to compete in. It was pretty much all remote.”
After the Tokyo Olympics, Wells moved to Indiana. He is now back in school working toward a degree in astrophysics while researching the rate of mass loss in dwarf galaxies. He hopes to someday become an astrophysics or astronomy professor.
The couple had already planned a post-Olympic trip around Europe. King told the “Today” show hosts she expected Wells to propose after the Olympics “because we’re going to go frolic around Europe after that.”
Wells said he seriously considered a Harry Potter-themed engagement proposal in Europe.
They’d go to King’s Cross Station, the London railroad station where a sign recognizes the fictional Platform 9 3/4 that takes students to Hogwarts. He’d propose as King pretended to push through the magical barrier.
“She’s a huge Harry Potter fan. James and Lily Potter, we joke about that all the time, how James and Lily were Harry’s parents,” said Wells, whose red hair makes him look more like a Weasley than a Potter. “She would be freaking out and that would be really cool, and that was my original plan.”
But as the trials neared, Wells said he changed his mind and began plotting his proposal in Indianapolis. King would be with her family and close friends in the swimming world. The swimming events were held at a temporary pool inside Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts. King is a big Colts fan, Wells said, “and swimming is a huge sport in the state. People are obsessed with it.”
Plus, King had been instrumental in getting the trials back to Indianapolis for the first time since 2000 by appearing in a promotional video that was part of the city’s bid to host the event.
With the plan in place, Wells informed his parents, Proctor and Joanne Wells, that they needed to watch “Lilly’s swim at 8:40.”
“I called after and they were freaking out. My dad, he’s a fisherman, and staying up until nine is late for him, so after he sees Lilly finishes second he’s happy she qualified and he’s falling asleep. And then my mom starts screaming because she sees me down there on the pool deck and is going ‘Oh my God, he’s going to propose,'” Wells said.
“Yeah, my dad woke up and saw it.”
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