Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov met on the ice, but their relationship was anything but chilly.
Gordeeva and Grinkov were first paired as ice-skating partners in 1981, when she was 10 and he was 14. The early partnership was a success — they earned the gold medal in the pairs category at the 1988 Calgary Games and won 24 of the 31 professional and senior level competitions they entered, finishing off the platform just once.
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Professional success eventually blossomed into romantic success. Gordeeva and Grinkov began dating in 1989; they wed two years later. Their daughter was born in 1992, and they continued their on-ice domination with another gold at the 1994 Lillehammer Games. They were also repeat performers in the Stars on Ice tour.
The wildly popular couple’s union came to a sudden and tragic end when Grinkov collapsed on the ice due following a massive heart attack while practicing in Lake Placid, N.Y., in 1995. He died at 28, leaving Gordeeva bereft of a skating partner and a husband.
But weep not for the prolific Gordeeva. She married Russian Olympic star Ilia Kulik in 2002, a year after the birth of their baby girl.