Jalen Brunson and Ali Marks married at the Ritz-Carlton in Chicago, turning a relationship that began in high school into the latest milestone in a public timeline that has followed the Knicks star from Adlai Stevenson High School to New York.
The couple’s wedding adds a new chapter to a story that has stretched across college, the NBA draft and Brunson’s rise with the Knicks. Brunson, a two-time national champion at Villanova, signed a four-year, $104 million deal with New York in 2022, and two months later proposed to Marks, who has been beside him since they started dating in high school.
Their connection was public long before the NBA spotlight. Brunson featured Marks on Instagram during his junior year of high school, and the pair showed up together at homecoming dances and proms at Adlai Stevenson High School. Before he got to Villanova, he posted a senior prom photo with Marks and wrote that he had gone to prom with the best date anyone could ask for.
While Brunson was at Villanova and Marks attended the University of Illinois, the relationship stayed intact across distance. When the Dallas Mavericks selected Brunson in the second round of the 2018 NBA Draft, Marks moved to Texas to be with him. She later began her career as a physical therapist, a step that came as Brunson’s profile kept climbing and he became the star of the New York Knicks.
That visibility has made Marks part of a conversation many athletes’ partners know well. She has described the Knicks wives and girlfriends as down to earth, but said she still balks at the label WAG because, in her view, it carries a negative connotation even when the term is used around a player’s family and circle. The label may be common around the league, but Marks has made clear she is more comfortable being seen for the life she built with Brunson than for a tag attached to it.
The couple announced their engagement on Instagram with the word “Forever,” after Brunson proposed on the basketball court at their high school gym shortly after he was inducted into the school’s athletics hall of fame. That proposal and the Chicago wedding now bracket a relationship that moved from school hallways to proms, from college long distance to Texas, and then into the center of one of the NBA’s most watched markets.
Marks gave birth to the couple’s first child, daughter Jordyn, on July 31, and the pair announced the arrival the next day. She later said it was not until she had Jordyn that she opened up a whole new world of moms in New York, describing it as an amazing community that rallies around each other. With Brunson now a centerpiece of the Knicks and Marks moving through life beside him, the next chapter is no longer about whether the relationship lasts. It is about how much of it the public will be allowed to see.
