She’s the most decorated U.S. Winter Paralympian of all time. He’s a nine-time world championship medalist. Together, they’re one of the most prolific couples in elite sports.

Having qualified for every Paralympic Games — winter and summer — since 2012, Oksana Masters and Aaron Pike have built remarkable résumés individually.

A multi-sport athlete, Pike professionally competes in para biathlon, para cross-country skiing, and para track and field. Since the Beijing Paralympics, he has won two individual world titles in para biathlon (12.5km individual (sitting) in 2023; 7.5km sprint (sitting) in 2025), as well as a third in the mixed 4x2.5km relay in para cross-country skiing (2023). At 39-years-old, Pike has held the American wheelchair marathon record twice, placed 2nd in the 2022 Boston Marathon, and raced to 3rd in two Chicago Marathons.

Masters also competes in para biathlon and para cross-country skiing, adding para cycling as her summer sport (she earned her first Paralympic medal, a bronze, in para rowing, though she since has shifted her focus to cycling due to injury). Between her four disciplines, Masters has collected 19 Paralympic medals (9 gold, 7 silver, 3 bronze), 14 of which she earned in her winter events. Half of those 14 came at the 2022 Beijing Games (2 gold, 1 silver in para biathlon; 1 gold, 3 silver in para cross-country skiing), where she became the first American to clinch seven medals at a single Paralympics.

When their accomplishments are combined, they amount to 19 world titles, 37 world championship medals, and countless appearances in Paralympic events.

Though they each compete separately, and their athletic journeys began long before they met, each credits much of their success to the other.

Their story together began in 2013.

Like many budding relationships, Masters and Pike’s began over a cup of coffee — though it wasn’t coupled with awkward conversation or enjoyed at a café located somewhere halfway between their homes. It was at the National Ability Center in Park City, Utah, where Masters, Pike, and others were competing in the 2013 Para Nordic National Championships.

The U.S. Para Nordic Skiing team is full of self-described coffee snobs. Several of its members bring their own coffee paraphernalia on the road for competitions and training camps: French presses, hand grinders, whole beans, etc. 

At this point, both Masters and Pike still were new to their winter sports. Following their performances at the 2012 Summer Games, they both had been invited to U.S. para Nordic development events, but they had never interacted before Masters happened to walk through the Ability Center’s common area as Pike and some others were drinking French press coffees.

“At first, I was like, ‘Oh, we have a good-looking guy on this team. I can maybe get behind this Nordic sport,'” Masters said.

Then, she saw the French press.

“That’s when I was like, ‘Oh, he’s got standards,'” Masters said.

Her admiration grew when, later at the event, Pike asked if Masters could drive him to pick up the fresh coffee beans he had shipped to Park City.

“That was just my excuse to get to see her again,” Pike said. “I could’ve figured out a way to get there. My buddy had a car, but I decided to do it when she could help me.”

Paralympian Aaron Pike competes at the Beijing Paralympics.

Getty Images

Their interactions over the next few months were sparse; without each other’s phone numbers, their communication mostly was limited to coincidental run-ins at various training events and get-togethers with members of the U.S. Para Nordic team.

Finally, having both made the roster for the 2014 Sochi Paralympics, Pike and Masters intentionally were headed to the same place at the same time. 

The chaos of the Games didn’t give them much time to connect, so Masters had to get creative. One day, as Pike headed toward the ski gondolas on his own, Masters sprinted to catch up to him. They boarded the gondola and rode together, finally alone, for 15 minutes.

“I remember giving her a big hug [after],” Pike said. “She had just gotten her first winter medal.”

For both Pike and Masters, that was the moment they knew there was something more between them.

“His hugs are so powerful,” Masters said. “I don’t know what’s in them or what you’re doing, but baby, it was like that missing link.”

After the Games ended, the team flew from Sochi to Frankfurt together before they went their separate ways. As Pike watched Masters walk down the jet bridge in Frankfurt, unsure of when they’d see each other again, both felt empty. 

In 2022 — eight years and three months later, Masters pointed out — Pike recreated their gondola moment in Grand Tetons National Park in Wyoming, proposing to Masters with her grandmother’s ring as they rode another cable car up a mountain.

As professional athletes in both summer and winter sports, Pike and Masters practically train year-round. There isn’t much of an offseason, and they have to transition from one set of skills to the other in a relatively short period of time.

“Skiing uses a pulling motion, whereas cycling and wheelchair racing are more of a pushing motion,” Pike said. “That first month-and-a-half is redeveloping those muscles and that neuro-muscular ability to be fast in a different way.” 

Additionally, instead of picturing their Paralympic cycles in quads, Masters and Pike only have two years between Games. While many athletes view the first year after an Olympic or Paralympic Games as a sort of rest period, Pike and Masters don’t have that luxury.

According to Pike, it helps that he and Masters specialize in endurance sports during both seasons.

“The strength training that we’re doing in the gym twice a week almost stays the same. We’re doing the same kind of interval training workouts,” Pike said. “You’re spending a lot of hours on the bike or a lot of hours on the ski, so a lot of that transfers over.”

But to constantly train at such an intense level also requires a certain resiliency — a skill which Masters and Pike have spent much of their lives refining.

Masters was born in Khmelnytskyi, Ukraine, in 1989 — three years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. As a result, she was born with a host of congenital birth defects: six toes on each foot, five webbed fingers on each hand, no thumbs, one kidney, no enamel on her teeth, no muscles in her hands. Her left leg was six inches shorter than her right, and both were missing weight-bearing bones. She was put up for adoption at birth.  

Before age 8, Masters moved between three orphanages, where she was beaten, starved, repeatedly sexually abused, and made witness to the beating death of her closest friend. After a two-year-long legal battle, an American professor named Gay Masters successfully adopted Oksana and brought her to Buffalo, New York. At 7-and-a-half years old, Oksana weighed just 36 pounds and stood at 37 inches tall. Medically speaking, she was considered “failure to thrive.” By age 14, Masters had both legs amputated above the knee.

Shortly before her second amputation, her mother’s job moved them to Kentucky, where Masters first tried adaptive rowing. The rest is history.

Born in Park Rapids, Minnesota, Pike was an athletic and outdoorsy child, competing in multiple youth sports and spending much of his free time camping and fishing with his family. 

Throughout his childhood, Pike lived all over the world, moving every three years due to his father’s job in the Air Force. He was 13 and living in Virginia when he and his father went hunting in a heavily-wooded area.

Upon hearing a noise somewhere in the woods, a member of another hunting party fired his shotgun in Pike’s direction. The bullet hit Pike in the back, causing an incomplete T-11 spinal cord injury that left him with limited mobility in his legs.

While he was still in the hospital, Pike met former U.S. Navy SEAL Carlos Moleda, who had experienced a similar injury. Moleda, a multi-time Ironman Triathlon winner in the handcycle division, introduced Pike to the world of adaptive sports. Pike soon began competing in wheelchair basketball and para track and field, eventually enrolling at the University of Illinois — a school known for its dominant programs in both sports. There, he won two national championships in wheelchair basketball. 

To have a partner who understands the pressure of being an elite athlete, the particular lifestyle that comes with being disabled, and the unique dynamic of being a disabled athlete means everything to Masters and Pike. They know exactly how to care for each other.

“I didn’t start succeeding as an athlete until he came into my life and helped me really feel confident in my abilities and … celebrate the things that I normally diminish,” Masters said. “When I have really bad days, he understands it. I understand his. And when the really good days come, they’re even better, because you’re celebrating them with your best friend … It’s our secret weapon that we have each other.”

In March, Pike and Masters hope to compete in their eighth Paralympic Games, and while they’ve already accomplished so much, they’re still hungry for more.

As Masters plans to increase her record number of Paralympic medals, Pike looks to build on his success from the past three years and secure his first.

“We’re training to be the best, to win. I’m not training for third place,” Masters said. “I’d be lying if I said I was.”

Beyond the 2026 Games, Masters and Pike aren’t sure where they’ll end up. The current plan is to both compete at their first home Games in 2028. In fact, Masters already has started developing a training regimen to transition from her winter sports back to para cycling. But their disabilities cause challenges they often are unable to predict.

Masters, for example, sat the 2024-25 winter season out due to a bone infection in her leg. Just as she had gotten cleared to train again, in July, she tore a ligament in her right hand in three places, requiring reconstructive surgery on two of her fingers — including the one she uses to pull the trigger in biathlon. It happened while she was zipping a suitcase shut.

It’s certainly not the ideal situation heading into a Paralympic year, but it’s one they’re both used to overcoming.

Besides, medals or not, Pike and Masters will be coming home from Milan Cortina with some new hardware regardless: wedding rings.

“Our journey and our story kind of started because of skiing," Masters said. "[Getting married] in Italy would be a perfect way for our forever journey to start together."