Commonwealth Games 2022: Australian swimming power couple Cody Simpson and Emma McKeon open up on their relationship
Cody Simpson and Emma McKeon have bonded in and out of the water, and now they’re inseparable. But how did it all happen? The couple reveal Simpson’s romantic ways.
Being a world famous pop star has its benefits.
When Cody Simpson fell head over heels for Australia’s golden girl Emma McKeon but couldn’t keep up with her in the pool, he knew he had to find another way to keep her attention.
So he did what every good crooner would: he won her heart the old romantic way, serenading the champion swimmer with love songs she couldn’t resist.
“Every morning, he wakes up with some random song,” McKeon said.
“That’s the real story.”
Simpson replied, playfully: “How do you think we got here in the first place?
“Couldn’t woo her in any other fashion than how I know best.”
The new power couple of Australian swimming, McKeon and Simpson have lifted the lid on their fledgling romance in a gorgeous tell-all interview with Seven’s Spotlight ahead of the Commonwealth Games.
Like their own parents, the lovebirds have bonded in and out of the water, and now they’re inseparable, completely smitten with each other.
“We’re loving where we’re at at the moment. And we have fun together. We just love each other’s company,” McKeon said.
Cody chimed in: “We talk every day about how happy we are and how lucky we are.
“You know, when you meet someone, you just recognise that there’s something there. I always saw her as this special person to me.
“Overall, pretty inspiring human. I always acknowledged that there was a connection that we had. But we didn’t act on it until what ended up being a year later.”
It was only in May that the golden couple went public as an item, sharing a sweet moment at the Australian trials in Adelaide when Simpson was selected for his first team.
A stalwart of the Dolphins for years, McKeon was sitting in the stands with Simpson and his family when he got the text message confirming he had made the team for the Commonwealth Games and their tender reaction melted hearts and sent social media into overdrive.
Simpson’s achievement of making it on the international swimming stage after quitting the sport for a decade to forge out an international music career is mind blowing enough.
But when coupled with McKeon, it’s like a Hollywood script that is set to be the feel-good story of the Commonwealth Games, starting in Birmingham later this week.
McKeon is regarded as Australian swimming royalty – and deservedly so.
Her parents Ron McKeon and Susie Woodhouse fell in love when they were representing Australia at the Commonwealth Games in the 1980s.
Susie’s brother Rob was also a champion swimmer, winning an Olympic medal for Australia, and the family’s success has passed through the generations.
Emma is now Australia’s most successful Olympian – with 11 medals, including five gold, and a record seven at Tokyo last year. She also has 12 Commonwealth Games medals, eight of which are gold, and she’s not close to completing her stockpile yet.
Her older brother David is a gun in the pool too, winning Commonwealth Games medals and representing Australia at the Olympics.
But Simpson’s gene pool is impressive too. His parents Brad and Angie also represented Australia around the same time as the McKeon’s and he was one of the most talented junior swimmers in the country when he suddenly gave it all up in his teens to pursue a career in music.
His other life took him to places few could imagine let alone experience. He became friends with stars the world over, including David Beckham and ‘Posh Spice’.
Simpson gave guitar lessons to the Beckham’s kids and was paid with bottles of their own branded whiskey, which he retained as a memento.
He’s been romantically linked with some of the world’s biggest stars, including American singer-songwriter Miley Cyrus, supermodel Gigi Hadid and Kylie Jenner.
A singer-songwriter himself, he’s also performed in front of sold out crowds across North America, with some of the biggest names in show business, including Justin Bieber.
In 2018, when the last Commonwealth Games were taking place in his home city, Simpson was playing for a very special guest.
“I was in London singing for the Queen because I’m from the Gold Coast,” he said.
“They had me go over and sing ‘I still call Australia home’ at Buckingham Palace for the Gold Coast Games.
“If you told me four years later I’d be swimming at the next one… it’s a funny thing, but you’ve got to take it all in your stride.”
There’s little fame, and even less fortune, in swimming but Simpson just couldn’t shake off the irresistible draw of the sport he once excelled at, so two years ago he unexpectedly announced he was taking a break from music to devote himself to making it to the Olympics.
In a sport where kids burn out all the time and never make it back it seemed like an impossible dream, with some sceptics even dismissing it as a publicity stunt.
But there were enough people who genuinely believed in him so he took the plunge and went all in.
“No one that had been there and done it themselves thought it was crazy,” Simpson told News Corp.
“I told (Michael) Phelps, I told (Grant) Hackett, I told (Ian) Thorpe, and I was never greeted with any doubts from any of those guys.
“They were always going ‘yeah, we think you can do it’ so that obviously just gave me the air under my wings to want to give it a crack.”
When Simpson did decide to get back into serious training, he soon returned from the US to his roots in southeast Queensland, teaming up with Michael Bohl.
One of the world’s great master coaches and motivators, Bohl was a believer too because he had been a teammate in the 1980s of both Simpson and McKeon’s parents.
He also trained Emma McKeon, who had left her family home in Wollongong to relocate to Queensland.
When Simpson joined Bohl’s squad, he couldn’t catch McKeon in the 100 metres butterfly – an event they both swam.
“Cut me some slack,” Simpson said. “She’s the best in the world but I wasn’t as good as I am now. I wasn’t fit.”
Simpson set his sights on making the Australian team for the 2024 Paris Olympics after missing out on Tokyo – which he never intended to shoot for, but decided to have a crack when it was delayed by 12 months.
McKeon meanwhile took a long break from training after her stunning performances in the Japanese capital, but when she finally did get back to Bohl’s squad, she immediately noticed the improvement Simpson had made.
“I come back a year later and I can’t keep up with you anymore,” she told him during their joint interview with Spotlight.
“It’s definitely a lot of hard work. There’s even people that have been doing it longer than I’ve done it as well. (I’m) just proud of him.
“He believed that he could do it. And that’s something that’s inspiring for me and a lot of people, is just to believe in yourself and you can get there.
“I’m someone that puts pressure on myself to do what I want to do and he’s the same. I guess it’s kind of like a stubborn mindset.
“Just being like, ‘no, this is what I want and I’m going to work for it.’ And I’m similar like that.”
Simpson didn’t expect to make the team this year but produced a stunning performance to finish third behind Matt Temple and Kyle Chalmers at the Australian championships in Adelaide, which doubled as the trials for the world titles and Commonwealth Games.
Chalmers – who briefly dated McKeon last year – raised some eyebrows when he entered the butterfly sprints because he’s normally a specialist freestyler but Simpson brushed it off.
Although his time for the trials would have got him into the final at the world titles in Budapest, he missed selection for the worlds because each country can only take two competitors.
But with three places available for each country at the Commonwealth Games, Simpson qualified for both the 50m and 100m butterfly in Birmingham, where he has an outside chance of winning a medal, though he expects his best is yet to come.
“I certainly didn’t expect it even to be a possibility until 2024 so the fact this stuff is starting to happen so quickly, so early is just unreal,” he said
“It means everything. My mum swam for Australia and I was told when I was a little boy that I’d want to swim for Australia as well. And then obviously I was sidetracked for the better part of ten years.
“When I decided to come back she was actually one of the only people that said ‘are you sure you want to do that? Do you understand what it entails and the work it entails and stuff? ‘And I said ‘yeah, I want to do it.’ So she’s been with me ever since.
“If you told me two years ago that I’d be here this soon, I wouldn’t believe you. I’d probably punch you in the face and tell you you’re dreaming,” he added.
“There’s been ups and downs and I’ve had doubts. I’ve had good weeks and really shit weeks sitting in my room wondering if I was in over my head or I was dreaming too big and all that stuff.
“I hope I can keep getting better but I don’t know how I’m going to respond to the kind of the stimulus and the pressures of an international meet like that because I’ve never been to one.
“It’s similar to performing on stage, in a sense... just having eyes on you and having expectations on you and certain pressures to deliver.
“That’s what I had learnt to do through my whole childhood, like growing up performing in front of people and singing in front of the Queen and doing all these things.”
Simpson says he won’t be breaking out any tunes in public if he does win a medal in Birmingham, but he may still sing for his sweetheart.
“She’s the only audience I have nowadays, so she gets all the shows,” he said.
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