The surfing icon Kelly Slater and his longtime girlfriend Kalani Miller are expecting their first child, they revealed on Tuesday.
The 52-year-old athlete and the 36-year-old model and businesswoman shared their happy news in an Instagram video revealing her burgeoning baby bump.
The new child will be the first that the couple — who have been together for 16 years — will share, though Kelly also welcomed a daughter in 1996 from a previous relationship.
The couple’s black-and-white social media video featured lovely slow-motion images of the two strolling together down a sun-dappled beached as Kelly wrapped one of his muscular arms around his love.
Kelly — who hung out with Avengers star Chris Hemsworth in Perth last year — went shirtless with swim trunks, while Kalani was decked out in a sleek black bikini that put her bump on full display.
The surfing icon Kelly Slater and his longtime girlfriend Kalani Miller are expecting their first child, they revealed on Tuesday
The 52-year-old athlete and the 36-year-old model and businesswoman shared their happy news in an Instagram video revealing her burgeoning baby bump
The clip, which was soundtracked to Ben Harper’s acoustic picking on The Three Of Us, included closeups of Kalani’s baby bump, as well as a sweet scene in which the lovebirds hugged each other.
The images conveyed the story well enough, and the couple simply captioned their video with a white heart emoji.
The two were inundated with congratulations in the comments, including several sweet messages from other surfers and colleagues of Kelly’s.
‘Massive congratulations,’ wrote Mick Fanning, while Ben Thomson joked that ‘That baby is going to shred.’
Filipe Toledo commented: ‘God Bless! Happy for you guys.’
Nathan Florence added ‘congratulations’ of his own, and Kai Lenny commented with a praise hands emoji and a black heart.
This is the first time Kelly has expanded his family, as he and his ex Tamara Mitchell welcomed their daughter Taylor Slater-Kelleher in 1996.
Kelly and Kalani’s romance goes back 16 years, but the couple met two years before they started dating at a surf trade show in San Diego in 2006.
The two have resisted tying the knot, and they don’t seem to have any plans to change that in the near future, though Kalani admitted that the pro surfer was her ‘ride or die’ during an interview with Graham Bensinger from 2009.
The couple’s black-and-white social media video featured lovely slow-motion images of the two strolling together down a sun-dappled beached as Kelly wrapped one of his muscular arms around his love
The two were inundated with congratulations in the comments, including several sweet messages from other surfers and colleagues of Kelly’s
Kelly and his ex Tamara Mitchell share their daughter Taylor Slater-Kelleher, whom they welcomed in 1996; Kelly and Taylor are pictured with Chris Hemsworth in 2015 in Malibu
Kelly and Kalani’s romance goes back 16 years, but the couple met two years before they started dating at a surf trade show in San Diego in 2006; seen in 2022 in LA
She also delved into her first meeting with Kelly.
‘At the time, me and my sisters were working for Roxy, which is the female counterpart of Quicksilver. And he was at the Quicksilver booth and he was in town for the contest at trestles,’ she explained.
She noted how strange it was that Kelly had been working with Quicksilver for over two decades at that point, and she had been with the company ‘for years and years,’ yet they had ‘never crossed paths, never seen each other [at] anything.’
‘It was funny [how] that far into it we see each other,’ she explained. ‘I remember exactly seeing him for the first time and like time really did stop.’
At the time she was excited to potentially expand her family with Kelly.
‘Hopefully’ she said of the prospect of welcoming a child or two with the surfer, though she said their upbringing in small families made her lean toward wanting something similar for herself.
‘I’m from a family of four. He’s from a family of three. Now when I see people traveling with four kids, I can’t imagine my family or anyone doing that,’ she admitted. ‘It’s crazy. I don’t know, maybe two or three.’
When she was asked if Kelly might consider retiring if they had a child, she said it was a ‘maybe.’
‘I don’t know because it would be interesting to see him try to balance both of those things and whatever, having to put his competitive nature aside for a second and put a baby first,’ Kalani said.
Slater has weighed in on a possible retirement multiple times over the years, but he seemed to be mulling the idea more during a post-competition interview in February at the Hurley Pro Sunset Beach in Oahu, Hawaii.
Kalani previously said she hoped for a child or two during a 2019 interview
She was uncertain if Kelly would continue surfing competitively with a child, and he has mused about possibly retiring multiple times over the years as his streak of wins has dried up; seen in September in LA
‘I am questioning competing to be honest with you,’ he said, according to Surfer.
‘My confidence isn’t super high,’ he added, before noting that he had not been surfing as often as he usually would in recent weeks.
Last year, he told People that he thinks ‘a lot’ about retirement.
‘It’s a reality, because it’s not far off for me. My competitive flame is burning low, but it can spark up at times,’ he said.
