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NEED TO KNOW
Courtney Vandersloot and Allie Quigley are expanding their team!
The Chicago Sky player, 36, and her basketball star wife, 38, welcomed their first baby together, PEOPLE can exclusively reveal. The WNBA couple’s little girl, Jana Christine Vandersloot Quigley, was born on April 8.
“We are over the moon to welcome our baby girl to the world,” Vandersloot and Quigly, affectionately known as “the VanderQuigs,” tell PEOPLE.
“We have been dreaming of this moment for a long time, and it’s better than we could have ever imagined!” the couple continues.
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Sweet Me Photography
In addition to announcing their baby news, the pair — who was the first married couple to win a professional sports championship together — shared a sweet photo with PEOPLE of them holding their little one.
The picture shows the new parents smiling down on little Jana, as they cradle her while sitting at the foot of their bed. Their baby daughter is swaddled in white and wearing a headband adorned with jeweled flowers.
Vandersloot and Quigley have been married since December 2018. The couple kept their relationship private for more than five years, however, before announcing news of their nuptials on Instagram.
Ned Dishman/NBAE via Getty
Their love story began with — you guessed it — basketball, at the end of the 2012-2013 Euroleague season, when both players were in Slovakia. Their respective teams went head-to-head in a five-game series to decide Slovakia’s champion.
Ultimately, Quigley’s team (Kosice) was victorious over Vandersloot’s team (Ruzomberok). However, they found themselves on the same flight and transportation back to the United States to prepare for the Chicago Sky, and got to know one another on the way.
“I’m not very talkative, especially with strangers,” Vandersloot said in a July 2019 interview with Sports Illustrated when recalling how she met her now wife. “I just don’t like small talk, and I never felt that with her.”
Despite expressing their shared feelings for each other, they opted for a friendship over a serious relationship throughout the season while they both played for the Chicago Sky. They started dating when the WNBA season wrapped toward the end of September.
Their relationship was tried amid their respective careers as professional athletes, between playing overseas on opposing teams in different countries and keeping their romance private. Ultimately, they shared the dating news with their teammates and coaches — and their worries disappeared.
Since then, they’ve been each other’s number one fan both on and off the court. While Vandersloot still plays for the Sky, Quigley sat out the 2023 and 2024 seasons — however, she has a lasting impression on the Chicago basketball scene.