12 years of Friendship to True Love ❤️⛸️ | Olivia Smart & Jean-Luc Baker’s Lovestory

We didn't really see each other much because it was COVID and we happened by chance like randomly to go to dinner in like December right before your Spanish Nationals I think and she was dating somebody at the time and we've been best friends at this point for like 11 or 12 years and I remember her telling me she's like wow this guy is like really special to me like they live together and like she's like I think I might be with him for the rest of my life and I was like whoa and I remember walking away from that dinner and I remember like this feeling in my gut of not being comfortable enough to like be at her wedding as a spectator and I was like what is this feeling and I was like I honestly could not live my life not knowing that she knew how I felt about her because it was in that moment that I really realized that I was in love with you and I think that I wasn't willing to be that guy either that watched her get married and I didn't say anything. We were at the Olympics and immediately just like kept gravitating towards each other. We finished the free dance at the Olympics and then we saw each other that night and I was like you know what now's my time to say something. I think that I had like so much courage because chasing the Olympic dream was something that I was always wanting and then after we finished the free dance I was like oh my gosh I can do anything what am I afraid of like what am I honestly afraid of and no so that night I was like I have to tell you like I'm in love with you and then it got real complicated so yeah. You finish your chapter you just closed your Olympic dream like you're on the highest emotions possible should we like celebrate this we're at the Olympics we've just finished competing like made our dreams come true and yeah he looked at me and said what he said and I'm pretty sure I laughed I'm pretty sure I chuckled and was like what? Coincidentally it was Valentine's Day as well. Yeah wild right? Not planned he said not planned. No like it was like something that I knew that I if I wanted her to hear me like really hear me and if I wanted to have a shot of her being able to like actually listen to what I had to say I knew that there'd have to be a big time change and I knew that we'd probably have to be somewhere that wasn't you going back to your apartment straight away so that's why I was like I'm gonna do it when I'm at the Olympics otherwise I'm never gonna do it. Of course inside of me I had butterflies like every time I saw him after this and we had the closing ceremony. Yeah you gravitated even more then. Yeah yeah like. Yeah for sure. We had like a really close friend of ours take their cameras at the closing ceremony and there's just like too many pictures of us hugging and just like those pictures that we'll probably blow up and put in our home one day. Oh yeah 100 percent. So he told me what he told me but I also knew I had a lot I had other drama going on in my life one now I have my best friend that's just told me he loved me and I'm in a relationship but two my partner retired at the world championships very unexpected. I was in a sticky situation of okay my career is not ended my career is on pause my partner's just retired my relationship is in limbo and my best friend loves me I was like oops when do I start writing my book because this is this is a lot. For two years I just lived in limbo not just with my relationships but with my career I didn't know what I was doing I didn't know who I was. I went into dancing on ice and which was a great break for me I did something that was new out of my comfort zone was back with family again and then I partnered up with Tim and even partnering up with Tim that was like the biggest risk I could have taken in my career because after such a successful partnership with Adrian and being at the top starting a new career especially in ice dance and having to climb that ladder again is challenging but I wasn't ready to be done with my career so I wanted to give it a try. I went back to Montreal to train with Tim and start that new career and I fell back into the old pattern of my ex-boyfriend well my boyfriend at the time back in my apartment and I felt like I was just living the same thing but not in the right way and with the right person and I had my light bulb moment that he had two and a half years ago and I just realized like look I'm not in the right relationship I'm not with the right person he was always in the back of my mind like with everything that I did and like I said for years before that as friends he was always the person I would go to in my struggles or in anything and for a period of time I couldn't go to him for those struggles because we were on rocky roads so losing that side and losing him as a friend during that time was where I realized how significant he was in my life and we were a place where we were talking again as friends and trying to regain that friendship and he asked me to help him out with a photo shoot for styling we went to get some clothes and then we were like grab a bite quickly. John Luke was leaving for LA the next day for two weeks and in that moment I realized okay this is my time and flip the roles and I said I have to talk to you and I said I am in love with you still I have been this whole time I'm sorry it's taking me so long to say it back I really want to experience this and I want to give this a try I opened up to you and just laid it all out on the table and he looked at me and he's like speechless but I'm also like doing a reverse card like now you know how I felt that was the most terrifying thing I've ever done but also like he said the most liberating feeling I just got very lucky that you opened the door and he let me back in into that space and there's a lot of trust building from there and a lot of work we both wanted to do just to make it work because we had put each other through a lot of bumps for those two years but we knew it would be worth it and