It’s the last place on earth you’d expect to find Venus Williams—a palm-shaded tiki bar on a Florida waterway in Palm Beach North: plastic armchairs, baskets of seafood on the menu, Jimmy Buffett over the speakers. But Venus likes the food at this honky-tonk, she tells me matter-of-factly, and we take a table on the sand with a lighthouse view. We’re in Jupiter, Florida, near Venus’s beachfront home, where she wed Danish Italian model-actor-restaurateur Andrea Preti in December in a multiday affair that the bride didn’t want to end. (There was also an intimate ceremony in Ischia, Italy, held months before.) “There’s no more wedding to plan,” she says with a sigh. “That part’s really sad.”

She proceeds to order a veggie burger, fries, and, to my surprise, a Bloody Mary. She’s joking, it turns out, though that’s almost impossible to discern, as her poker face—once described as “lapidary” for its exquisite composure—has been finely honed across a 32-year career.

Improbably, that career is still going strong. Unlike her younger sister, Serena, who announced in 2022 that she was “evolving away” from tennis, Venus, at 45, has never even hinted at retirement. “I get a lot of joy out of being different or unexpected or bucking the system,” she says. “I find that thrilling.” Venus is currently the oldest competitor on the women’s tour, and though she did step away two years ago to treat a debilitating, and long undiagnosed, uterine fibroid condition called adenomyosis, the seven-time Grand Slam champion came charging back last year, getting as far as the US Open doubles quarterfinals with 23-year-old Canadian Leylah Fernandez. “It was a lot of fun,” Fernandez says of their run. “Walking onto the court with Venus and seeing how much joy tennis has brought to her, it was one of those moments where I thought, Wow. It’s not just a job.”

Except for the bejeweled black Simone Rocha Crocs on her feet, Venus is dressed entirely in winter white this evening, a nod to her recently bygone bridal era. While she’s long had the fantasy of living abroad—Preti’s family is based in Rome—Venus and her husband have settled near here, enjoying the proximity to Serena and her family, and to their parents, who also live in the area. “They’re older now,” Venus says of her parents, “and I want every minute with them.” Family is paramount to Venus, and while she froze her eggs in her 30s to have “options,” she isn’t in any hurry to start her own. “I’m playing,” she reminds me. “So it would be very inconvenient.”

Sacrifice has been a recurring theme in Venus’s career, though she wouldn’t frame her story that way. Venus and Serena were famously molded into prodigies on the public tennis courts in Compton, California, by their father, Richard Williams, who worked as a security guard, and their mother, Oracene Price, then a registered nurse. “We were just laser-focused,” she says. “We missed out on things that we didn’t even know we were missing out on.” Skipping the juniors circuit to stay in school was about the only thing she had in common with her teenage peers. “I remember one kid, I was kind of friends with him. He was like, ‘You think you’re better than us.’ Because I didn’t have time to hang out after school,” Venus says. “We immediately went to train for five hours.”

That dedication yielded milestones. At 17, Venus became the first unseeded female player to reach a US Open final. Five years later, she claimed the number one ranking, the first African American woman to do so in the Open era—this after winning Wimbledon and the US Open with her exceptional combination of power and speed and her tireless court coverage. Her ground strokes were unmatched; her missile-like first serve later set the women’s record at 129 miles per hour (and went unbroken for seven years).

Fernandez believes Venus elevated the game to an art form. “It’s so beautiful how she moves, how she kind of glides on grass, which is one of the hardest things to do. She’s not forcing it, it looks so easy. Everything flows.”

There would be accomplishments off-court as well. In 2006 she successfully negotiated with Wimbledon and French Open officials to award female players equal prize money to men, writing a thoughtful op-ed for The Times that informed the powers that be that they were on “the wrong side of history.” Venus capped off this campaign by winning Wimbledon the following year and collecting the same pay as her male co-champion.

Then Serena came along. In the 2021 film King Richard, their father, in an Oscar-winning turn by Will Smith, presages the dynamic, telling a young Serena, “Your sister is gonna be number one in the whole world, no doubt about it. But you gonna be the best there ever was.” Serena would indeed wrest the number one spot from her older sister and beat her in four consecutive Grand Slam finals, from 2002 to 2003. Venus’s story—extraordinary though it was—was steadily subsumed by Serena’s.

The sisters played each other 31 times, nine of those matches Grand Slam finals (Serena won seven). “I didn’t want to play her,” Venus says. “I was hoping someone else would take her out, to do the hard work for me. Then I could play them, which would’ve been much easier.” She shakes her head and laughs, a breezy demeanor suggesting she wears these memories lightly. “But it was what it was. We got to play a lot of times. I wanted to win. I won as much as I could.”

Serena is more direct. “It was a nightmare,” she says, speaking from her Palm Beach home after a morning spent making slime with her two-year-old daughter, Adira. Playing Venus “was the most difficult thing in my career,” she says. “It’s something you don’t prepare for mentally, because it’s impossible.”

The complexity and strain of their on-court rivalry drew commentary—and not much of it was kind. Some even ascribed nefarious motives to the wins and losses. America’s favorite tennis crank, John McEnroe, insinuated that Richard Williams was predetermining outcomes. And when Venus withdrew from a 2001 semifinal against Serena at Indian Wells due to a knee injury, the crowd turned on the sisters. Serena was booed at her final, as were her father and Venus, who came to cheer on Serena. Richard reported hearing racial epithets. The Williamses boycotted the tournament for 14 years.

Doubles, of course, was a less complicated story. The sisters simply dominated, winning 14 Grand Slam doubles titles and three Olympic gold medals. “Now I realize how magical that was,” Venus says of their doubles record. “I feel like I can find a word better than magical,” counters Serena, ever the competitive sibling. “It was magical, but it was also once in a lifetime.”

Serena goes on: “We grew up as singles players. And then my dad said one day, ‘You guys are going to play doubles. Serena, you stand on this side. Venus, you stand on that side.’ And we kept those sides our whole career. We never grew up thinking, Oh, I’m going to win doubles Grand Slams or any of that stuff. But we did. We won them all.”

Though there have been rumors of a Serena comeback—Novak Djokovic recently predicted that she and Venus would be playing doubles together at Wimbledon—the mother of two says she’s firmly in her “mom era.” The professional partnership Serena and Venus do have at the moment is their podcast Stockton Street, which launched last September and has featured guests ranging from Olympic sprinter Gabby Thomas to billionaire businessman Mark Cuban. The height of Serena’s ambition beyond that, she tells me, is to replicate those perfect bento box lunches she sees all over social media for her daughters.

Venus, meanwhile, is immersed in workouts, led by her coach Diego Ayala, who previously trained Jelena Janković and Robby Ginepri. “Three hours on the court every day,” she reports. “I work like a dog.” Her work ethic is fueled partly by the experience of playing without pain. For years her undiagnosed adenomyosis caused excessive bleeding, anemia, painful fibroids, and nausea, symptoms that were only successfully treated when Venus underwent a myomectomy, or surgical fibroid removal, in 2024. Venus has also had to contend with the autoimmune disease Sjögren’s syndrome for the last two decades, which causes fatigue and shortness of breath and led to more layoffs from tennis. “I feel great,” Venus says now simply, though she doesn’t know how long this will last. “Hopefully the fibroids don’t grow back. It can happen. They don’t know why.”

Time off from tennis paid other dividends. It was in 2024 that Venus met her husband—at a Gucci runway show in Milan. Preti introduced himself and the two struck up a conversation. “She speaks Italian very, very well,” Preti says. And when a text relationship ensued, “she asked for restaurant suggestions in Milan, and I said I want to see you,” he remembers. They connected in London, where Venus was cohosting the Serpentine Summer Party. Venus, who’d been single for six years, quickly identified Preti, an old-school romantic, as the One.

“In the past a guy would call you; he would tell you you looked beautiful, that he loved your outfit. In this day and age, that doesn’t really happen,” she laments. “But Andrea did all those things. The first time he called, I thought, Is something wrong?”

The tight-knit Williams family swept Preti into the fold. “He is her biggest cheerleader,” Serena says. “It’s rare to find someone who loves you wholeheartedly for who you are, not what you represent.” Preti felt their welcome right away. “We were very close,” Preti says. “We could talk about everything, fashion, movies, lots of things. They didn’t make me feel like I was outside.”

In lieu of a honeymoon, Venus and Preti have been together on the road, Venus securing wild card bids to the Australian Open, the ATX Open in Austin, Indian Wells, and the Miami Open. Preti has cheered her on from her player’s box, Venus’s 18-year-old Havanese pup, Harry, perched on his lap. On the rare off-day, the newlyweds like to stay close—as in, locked-in-a-room close. “We love escape rooms,” Venus admits. “We work well together, but he definitely likes to ask for hints, and I’m like, Let’s just hold on. I wanna figure this out first.”

In May the couple will make their debut in grander confines, at the Met Gala. Venus is serving as co-chair, alongside Beyoncé and Nicole Kidman. This year’s exhibition, “Costume Art,” sets fashion alongside the dressed form in fine art through centuries—and through a spectrum of body types. “I love the theme. It’s a perfect fit for me,” Venus says. “It’s even more important today because people feel so much pressure to look a certain way. Though there’s so much beauty in difference.”

Venus herself reached the height of five eleven at 13. “I definitely had an awkward period, but I didn’t know I was in it,” she says and laughs (she’d eventually grow to six one). “I didn’t go through a period like, ‘Oh my God, I’m so tall. Guys are this tall.’ I was trying to figure out how to beat these people who were coming for me,” she says. “I was focused on being the best player in the world. I didn’t have time to think about whether I was winning some imaginary beauty contest.”

Venus famously loves fashion—last year at the US Open she wore a parade of New York designers, including Khaite, Luar, and Who Decides War, onto court. Gabriela Hearst, who dressed her for the 2022 Met Gala in a black Chloé suit and sunglasses, adores working with her. “Venus looked so elegant,” Hearst recalls of the Met look, a play on the film Men in Black. “As a superathlete, she is very aware of her body and knows exactly what she wants.” Of late Venus has been simplifying her wardrobe. The cream-colored wool jacket she wears to our interview is Max Mara, which she’s had for a long time, and the matching quarter-zip sweater underneath was a purchase from “Bezos Atelier,” she jokes. “I had to recover from a shopping addiction,” she goes on. “It was horrible. Too much excess.” The remedy has been to donate much of the fashion she owns—handbags especially. (“My dog is my best accessory,” she says with pride.) A look she’s kept is the first one she spent prize money on, a Dolce & Gabbana corset she bought at 19.

When she needs a fashion fix, Venus will turn on Sex and the City. “I was 17 when it came out, and didn’t watch risqué stuff,” she says. But she’s made up for lost time: “I’m a Miranda. I love her because she’s cut-and-dried and logical. When she’s angry, she’s angry. And when she’s a jerk, she’s a jerk.” The subject of fashion brings us closest to retirement talk during our conversation; Venus muses that she’d like to spend more time sewing her own clothes when she stops playing—which is something of a full-circle moment, given that her mother sewed her tennis skirt for her tour debut at 14.

But as long as she’s playing, “there’s no time to sew,” Venus says. A few weeks later, when she arrives at the ATX Open, flashes of top-form Venus are on display. Center Court is packed for her match against Croatian Australian Ajla Tomljanović, who has the distinction of being the last player to beat Serena on the tour. Preti is here, ensconced in his wife’s player’s box with Harry, cheering her on in French (“allez”) and Italian (“va bene”). The crowd is unabashedly pro-Venus, roaring loudly after every winning shot. Her first serve is still a weapon, and when she nails a backhand down the line, the stadium erupts in “Let’s go, Venus” chants.

Tomljanović bests Venus in the end, but it doesn’t matter: Venus is met with a standing ovation as she makes her way off Center Court, and she acknowledges the crowd with a smile and an appreciative wave. This reminds me of something she said in Florida, something that touched on legacy and what it means to her: “I’ve had a great life getting to do what I love and being able to do it well,” she told me. “It’s an honor. Selfishly, I wanted to be a champ, I wanted to win. But in doing positive things for myself, it trickled down. Like, all of a sudden all of these people are playing”—she means players like Coco Gauff, Madison Keys, Naomi Osaka, and Hailey Baptiste, who have all cited Venus as their inspiration. “It’s all beyond what I could have imagined.”

In this story: hair, Felicia Burrows; makeup, Frankie Boyd; manicurist, Sherwin Hora; tailor, Kyle Kasabuske.

Produced by Modem Creative Projects.