El Enlace de Ensueño - La Boda de Andre Agassi y Steffi Graf

Agassi had a crush on Graf prior to meeting her

Agassi developed a crush on his future wife before meeting her in person. “I’ve had a crush on Steffi since I first saw her doing an interview on French TV,” he wrote in his memoir Open. “I was thunderstruck, dazzled by her understated grace, her effortless beauty.”

Following the French Open in 1991, Agassi tried to get a message to his crush. “But she didn’t respond,” he shared in his book.

Exhibition Matches

As part of her farewell tour in 1999 and 2000, Graf played a series of global exhibition matches against past competitors. These included games against Amanda Coetzer in South Africa, Jelena Dokic in New Zealand, and Sánchez Vicario in Spain; the latter match was the first head-to-head between the two women since 1996. Graf later participated in a number of other exhibitions in cities including Tokyo, Berlin, and Washington, DC.

In 1999, a panel of experts at the Associated Press named Graf the 20th century's greatest female tennis player. Later, in 2012, Tennis Channel chose her as the greatest female tennis player of all time, a distinction echoed by a Tennis.com reader poll in 2018. Further honors include seven years as International Tennis Federation World Champion; eight years as Women's Tennis Association Player of the Year; and five years as German Sportsperson of the Year. In 2004, Graf was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, and in 2008 entered into the German Sports Hall of Fame.

Career Earnings

During her career Steffi earned $21 million in tournament prizes. That's the same as around $40 million in today's dollars. She earned tens of millions more from endorsements.

In 1995 Steffi was accused of tax evasion by German tax authorities. Authorities actually went so far as to arrest Steffi's father, a former used car salesman who managed her finances, for failing to pay income on $25-35 million of her earnings. That constituted roughly every penny she had earned up to that point playing tennis professionally. The Grafs were also accused of writing off $700,000 worth of legal and other expenses that were allegedly used to cover up an extramarital affair conducted by Peter.

Steffi was questioned but placed the blame entirely on her father, who was eventually convicted and sentenced to 45 months in prison. He served 25 months. Steffi had to pay 1.3 million Deutsche Marks in penalties and fines.

At a particularly low point during the saga, July 1996, Steffi was playing in a Wimbledon match when a fan yelled out "Steffi, will you marry me?!" After attempting to gather herself and holding back a laugh for a bit, Steffi finally replied "how much money do you have?!" much to the audience's delight: