Swimming: Michael Phelps' secret wedding

Michael Phelps waves during the 2016 Ryder Cup Celebrity Matches. Photo / Getty Images

One month before making more history at the Olympics in Brazil, Michael Phelps was getting married in the desert of Arizona.

In news first reported by TMZ, Phelps and Nicole Johnson, to whom he'd been engaged since February and spent the Olympics being referred to as Phelps' fiancee, were married in a private and secret wedding on June 13, a few weeks after their son, Boomer, was born and a few more before travelling to Brazil for the start of the Games.

The marriage license shows that Phelps and Johnson were married June 13 in Paradise Valley. That night, Johnson posted this from her Instagram account.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Nicole Michele Phelps (@mrs.nicolephelps)

You read that in retrospect and you're all "how didn't we figure out this was a wedding?"
And then you realise it's "oh, probably because the baby is wearing one of those novelty baby T-shirts that says something like "whale of a time" with a picture of a cartoon whale" and "Phelps is wearing an Under Armour shirt with his personal MP logo over the right breast and nobody is baller enough to get married in their own branded clothing (checks to see what Kanye got married in), nobody."

It's then you realise the picture was probably taken after the ceremony, though if they got married in comfortable clothing and didn't get gouged by those robber barons in the wedding-dress industry, respect.

Phelps and Johnson reportedly began dating all the way back in 2007, after Phelps had become an Olympic champion but before he'd become an Olympic immortal with his eight-gold performance in Beijing.

They broke up and got together and broke up and got together, according to those celebrity rags, before getting engaged three months before Boomer was due.

The newborn was a constant presence at Phelps' final races - at U.S. Trials and the Olympics - usually wearing custom-made headphones for the sound and not leaving the arms of his mom.

Phelps had been asked before the Olympics what he expected out of his big day. "Small wedding, big reception," he said. "That's what we want."
And quiet too, apparently.