Who Is Misty Copeland's Husband? All About Olu Evans

Misty Copeland might be busy breaking barriers as one of the most famous ballerinas in history, but she still makes time for her husband, Olu Evans.

Copeland and Evans have been married since 2016 after meeting 10 years earlier, and they have kept much of their relationship out of the public eye.

“My personal life I’ve really kept pretty private my whole career,” Copeland told PEOPLE in 2022.

While Evans also seems to stay out of the spotlight, with no public social media accounts, there are still some things to know about him, including that he's a successful lawyer and one of Copeland’s biggest supporters.

So who is Misty Copeland’s husband? Here’s everything to know about Olu Evans and his relationship with the ballerina.

He was Copeland’s first boyfriend 

Copeland and Evans met at a club in Chelsea, New York, in 2004. A decade later, she told Elle he spotted her on the dance floor and approached her. When they started dating, it marked Copeland’s first romantic relationship.

“He was my first boyfriend,” she said. “He taught me to communicate in ways I’d never learned before, to not run away from problems, and sit down and think about things critically. And he made me feel like I really did have a bright future as a ballerina.”

He’s an attorney 

Evans, who is a registered attorney in New York, graduated from Emory University School of Law and was admitted as a lawyer for New York State in 2007.

He has a famous cousin

Copeland is certainly not the first famous person Evans has spent time with. His cousin is actor Taye Diggs, who introduced the couple when they first met in New York.

In October 2014, Diggs posted a photo of them together on Instagram in suits, smiling with their arms around one another's shoulders and the simple caption, “Yup.” In another photo that appears to have been taken the same day, he wrote in the caption, “Black excellence.”

In 2015, Diggs posted a photo of himself with Copeland and Evans with no caption. According to Page Six, the three were celebrating the couple’s engagement.

They got married in 2016

Copeland and Evans took their relationship slowly, getting engaged about 10 years after they met and getting married the following year. They tied the knot on July 31, 2016, in Laguna Beach, California.

While Copeland didn’t share a lot from their wedding, she did tell PEOPLE a few months before the big day that she wanted to be a more low-key bride and that she was so busy she had a lot of other people handling the small details.

“I think I’m a pretty simple girl, so I like for there to be no drama,” she said at the time. “I just want to enjoy the day, and not have it be about the preparation.”

Copeland had also discussed her wedding gown in an August 2015 interview with Vanity Fair, saying, “I’d like to show my figure, somewhat – romantic and elegant. I don’t think I want to go super poofy or anything like that.” She added, “I want to feel like myself – but more beautiful than I do every day.” 

He’s a dad 

Evans became a dad when Copeland gave birth to their first child together around April 2022.  In a July 2022 interview with PEOPLE, Copeland revealed she was on maternity leave with her 3-month-old baby, a boy named Jackson.

She also touched on what it had been like for her and Evans as new parents. “It’s never easy, but I wouldn’t be able to do it without having a support system,” she said. “My husband is incredible and he’s an amazing dad. He’s been there for me throughout my entire career to help me to be able to balance those things.”

Copeland went on to say that, even with the support, she was still making “sacrifices.”

“I’m not at big events every night and out partying and going to dinners,” she said. “I have to make sacrifices to be able to do all the things that I want to do.”

Copeland didn’t reveal much about their child, saying she wanted to keep the baby’s life private.

They live in New York

Copeland and Evans met in New York in 2004 and have been there since. The two have an apartment in the Upper West Side in Manhattan, something they shared with Architectural Digest.

A 2014 profile of how Copeland spends a typical day appeared in The New York Times, showing that the couple prefers to keep things low-key and simple. In the profile, she talked about how they love to grab brunch together and go shopping.

“We both like clothes so we’ll go shopping,” Copeland said. “We both like to go to Bed Bath & Beyond, we love to go in there, even if there’s nothing that we need, we just love to go in that place! I like the kitchen section, he loves the bedroom stuff.”

She also described herself as a “homebody,” saying the couple loves to watch movies and TV shows together, and noting that Evans had gotten her into watching Friday Night Lights.

He’s supportive 

Copeland doesn’t open up about her relationship often, but whenever she does, she has nothing but good things to say about Evans. In a July 2015 interview with Soledad O’Brien at the POWHERFUL event at Google, she said that she knew Evans was the one for her because “he wasn’t afraid of hearing or seeing me so damaged – and that he wanted to help because he cared about me as a person.”

“I always said, ‘No man is coming in and taking me away from ballet,’ ” she went on. “And that was so important to me that the person I ended up with was going to support me in every way, because my career is so important to me.”

In a 2015 interview with The Telegraph, Copeland said that Evans helped her feel more confident and take better care of herself after some personal struggles with her weight. “He made me feel like [my body] is my instrument and I have to take care of it,” she said.

Later in the interview, she discussed how she had once wanted a large family, but had decided to keep it small. “Maybe two,” she said when asked how many kids she wanted. “I’m trying to think about timings of that with my boyfriend. I’m very regimented and organized – [he] understands that.”

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