Olympian Lolo Jones says she plans to stay a virgin until marriage. From Tim Tebow to Elizabeth I, see more famous faces who were open about keeping their ‘V-card’ close.
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Olympic hurdler Lolo Jones became an Internet sensation this week after she revealed that she’s still a virgin. According to the 29-year-old, staying that way hasn’t been easy. Jones divulged, “There’s virgins out there and I want to let them know that it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Harder than training for the Olympics. Harder than graduating from college has been to stay a virgin before marriage. I’ve been tempted, I’ve had plenty of opportunities.” The athlete has previously discussed her devout Christianity and said of sex before marriage, “I just don’t believe in it. It’s just a gift that I want to give to my husband.”
Incoming New York Jets quarterback Tim Tebow probably has the world’s most lucrative virginity. Ever since 2009, when Tebow admitted during a press conference that he was a virgin, the Heisman Trophy winner’s bedroom habits have become the subject of intense speculation. Dating-hookup website AshleyMadison.com offered $1 million to any woman who can prove she’s slept with the 24-year-old and Virgin Atlantic Airways offered the football star free flights as long as he retains his V-card. Despite rumors of hookups with the likes of Taylor Swift and Kim Kardashian though, the football star maintains that he has kept his pants firmly zipped.
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30 Rock star Tina Fey now has two children, but according to the actress, she’d kept herself chaste until she was 24, when she met her husband, Jeff Richmond. “I couldn’t give it away!” Fey joked during an appearance on Late Show with David Letterman. “That’s just good, Christian values, or, being homely.”
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For years it was reported that former Friends star Lisa Kudrow had remained a virgin until after she got married at the age of 32. “It’s actually the most frequently asked question of me after, ‘Will there be a Friends reunion?’” she lamented during an appearance last year on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. But, as she went on to explain, “That was from an article a long time ago and then you had something about it in your monologue a million years ago... It’s not true!” While Kudrow was eager to set the record straight, there was one issue she kept mum about: when Leno quipped, “So, how many guys are we talking here?” Kudrow jokingly replied, “I’ll just laugh like I’m good-natured.”
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Given her raunchy music videos and revealing outfits, few people probably believed her—but when Britney Spears was still a teenager, she publicly proclaimed herself a virgin. Despite rumors that Britney gave it away at 18 to her then-boyfriend Justin Timberlake (he famously blabbed to reporters, “She lost her virginity a while ago—and I should know”), the ruse went on for years until the truth was set straight by Spears’s own mother. Lynne Spears wrote in a memoir that her pop-star daughter had lost her virginity at age 14 to a high-school football player from her hometown of Kentville, La.
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Like any good minister’s daughter, pop star Jessica Simpson allegedly remained a virgin until after her marriage to Nick Lachey in 2002. “Of all the things about myself, staying a virgin until my wedding night is the thing that makes me most proud,” she once boasted. “I was always told I had a body made for sin, but I was never no sinner. Nick was for real. He respected me for it. It was often him having to fend me off. Boy, it was hard, but he knew I’d hate myself and him in the morning.” The tradition of abstinence has reportedly spanned several Simpson generations, with Simpson’s mother and grandmother also allegedly having saved themselves for after marriage.
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The pop band has been upfront about waiting until marriage, even wearing purity rings 24/7. The announcement was well received especially by mothers nation-wide, and the boys quickly became positive role models on the Disney Channel. So far, eldest brother Kevin is the only one of the trio to trade in the purity ring for a wedding band.
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Former L.A. Lakers star A.C. Green, nicknamed “Iron Man,” began and ended his professional basketball career as a bachelor and virgin. He told Sports Illustrated, “I love that people remember me for that. I took a stand, and I was a voice for a generation. I’m proud of that.” He later got married to his wife, Veronique, and now works for his organization that supports kids in abstinence, the A.C. Green Youth Foundation.
The Victoria’s Secret angel is known for her good looks and scandalous photo shoots—and staying a virgin until she married basketball player Marko Jaric in 2009. During a 2006 interview with GQ magazine, Lima adamantly asserted, “Sex is for after marriage… [Men] have to respect that this is my choice. If there’s no respect, that means that they don’t want me.” The devout Catholic and her husband now have a 2-year-old girl named Valentina and are expecting their second child.
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The late child star Gary Coleman was always a family fave on Diff’rent Strokes—and during his later years, he was also a real-life 40-year-old virgin. He admitted to The Insider that even after two months of being married to his wife, Shannon Price, he still hadn’t lost his V-card. “It’s my business, it’s my issue and I really don’t think it’s a problem,” he said at the time. “It’ll happen when it’ll happen, and it’ll happen for all the right reasons.”
With the many titles that Henry David Thoreau claimed—author, philosopher, abolitionist—virgin is not one of the most well-known. The romantic poet never married, so some Walden-watchers say it’s likely that the Civil Disobedience author died a virgin, and never had a wife to adore and read to.
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Who can be a more famous virgin than a queen? Queen Elizabeth I took reign of her kingdom in 1558, at age 25. The Virgin Queen, as she came to be called, had many suitors and went through numerous courtships. Historians still debate why she never chose to officially marry, but she proclaimed she was married to her kingdom and her subjects. As it happens, history can get foggy as time goes on—meaning the world may never know if the Virgin Queen really was a virgin in how we define it today. But she did say before she died, “And, in the end, this shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare that a queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin.”
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