4 min read
THE RUNDOWN
Jessica Pegula and Taylor Gahagen have been together since at least 2016 and married in October 2021.Gahagen regularly supports his wife at tennis tournaments.The couple shares several ventures off the court, including a nonprofit called Lend a Paw.
Jessica Pegula and her husband, Taylor Gahagen, have been together through some of the biggest years of her tennis career.
The couple was first linked around 2016 and married in 2021 after postponing their original wedding date during the pandemic. While Gahagen tends to keep a low profile, he has supported Pegula at tournaments and worked alongside her off the court, including on their nonprofit, Lend a Paw.
Most recently, Pegula gave a rare glimpse of their relationship on social media. In July 2026, she shared some photos with Gahagen after they attended fellow tennis player Tommy Paul and Paige Lorenze’s wedding. “A beautiful week of wedding(s) loved celebrating with everyone 🫶🏼,” she wrote.
Here, everything to know about Gahagen and his relationship with Pegula.
He played college baseball.
Gahagen attended Williamsville North High School and later enrolled at SUNY Fredonia, where he studied business administration and played for the school’s baseball team.
He continued his education at Canisius University in Buffalo, earning an MBA and working as a graduate assistant with the school’s hockey program.
He spent nearly a decade working for Pegula’s family business.
Gahagen began working for Pegula Sports and Entertainment, the company owned by Pegula’s parents, Terry and Kim Pegula, in 2014.
In a 2016 interview with WKBW, Gahagen spoke about what excited him about the work.
“I don’t think there’s anywhere else I would want to work,” he said. “It’s so exciting. I think everybody’s talked about the opportunity in the area and the opportunity for Buffalo and the pride of Buffalo is bar none. Raising the profile of Buffalo on a national, international, global scale is what’s most exciting.”
He left Pegula Sports and Entertainment in 2023. Gahagen now works as a managing partner at Dragos Capital and Agarwood Wealth, according to his LinkedIn.
He and Pegula have been together for more than a decade.
Pegula and Gahagen kept the early years of their relationship mostly private. One of Pegula’s earliest Instagram posts with Gahagen dates back to September 2016, when she shared a photo from a date in New York City.
By 2019, Pegula had begun wearing an engagement ring. The couple planned to marry in the fall of 2020 before the pandemic forced them to change their plans.
“We were supposed to get married in October last year,” Pegula said on the Tennis.com Podcast in January 2021. “We postponed it a year…It’s fine; it worked out!”
They married in 2021.
Pegula and Gahagen eventually married at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina, in October 2021.
The couple celebrated with family, friends, and several of Pegula’s fellow tennis players, including Jennifer Brady, Asia Muhammad, Taylor Townsend, and Samantha Crawford.
They honeymooned in Costa Rica—and learned they have very different definitions of adventure.
Pegula’s tennis schedule meant the newlyweds waited until summer 2022 to take their honeymoon. They chose Costa Rica, where Pegula went waterfall rappelling and zip-lining. Gahagen preferred to stay on solid ground.
“We went to Costa Rica, my husband and I, after Wimbledon, and it was so much fun,” Pegula later told the WTA. “It was amazing. We want to go back so bad, because it was just the best experience with people, the food, the lifestyle, was so much fun.”
“But I am very adventurous, so I was actually waterfall rappelling down like a massive waterfall. I don’t know if that was the smartest thing to do, but my husband is not adventurous at all, so he didn’t even go… I went by myself on our kind of vacation together… But he did wait for me with the tour guides.”
They share a love of dogs.
Pegula and Gahagen founded A Lending Paw, a nonprofit that works with rescue dogs and trains them to become service animals.
“We wanted to help people afford service dogs,” Pegula told Vogue. “Not only is that about dogs helping people, it’s about people helping dogs, because we only work with rescues. It goes both ways.”
The couple have dogs of their own, too. In May 2024, Pegula announced on Instagram that they had adopted another puppy.
He supports Pegula at her tennis matches but keeps a low profile.
Gahagen has traveled to watch Pegula compete, but he generally stays out of the public eye.
After Pegula reached her first Grand Slam final at the 2024 U.S. Open, she became emotional while discussing the family members who had supported her during the tournament—and playfully called out her husband for trying to avoid attention.
“It’s amazing. I have my brother there, my sister there. My dad, my brother-in-law, lots of friends, lots of family all scattered around. Obviously, my husband. He’s not even standing up. He doesn’t want to be seen,” she said.
She continued, “I have so much family here. And they’ve been here watching a lot of my matches. So, to still be here, and to have them still here supporting me is crazy. I’m glad that they’re able to share this moment with me.”
He occasionally gives Pegula tennis advice.
Gahagen may spend plenty of time around professional tennis, but Pegula has made clear that he doesn’t have a formal background in the sport.
During a 2025 episode of The Player’s Box podcast, she revealed one of his favorite pieces of advice: “Taylor just tries to tell me to slice more. That’s always his go-to.”
His favorite WTA player, Pegula added, is Monica Niculescu, known for her unconventional forehand slice.
“I forget who she was playing. She was playing like someone we knew. And he was like, oh, that’s nasty. Like just the cutter, like the slice forehand. He loves it. So he’s just like, yeah, you need to like just do some more spins and stuff,” Pegula said.
She then summed up his coaching credentials: “Clearly, my husband is not a tennis player. Or has no formal background or any whatever. But that’s usually just his advice to me. And I’m just like, ‘Okay.’”