J.J. Watt took issue Wednesday night after Real Salt Lake welcomed him and his family to the game on X but did not name his wife, Kealia Ohai Watt, in the post. Watt responded publicly, saying the woman in the photo had grown up down the road and deserved a mention.
Real Salt Lake’s post read, “Welcome to the Riot, @JJWatt and fam,” and Watt replied that his wife was not just a bystander in the picture. He pointed to her resume in the same post, writing that she won four Utah state championships, including one in that exact stadium, was a two-time Gatorade Player of the Year, a National Player of the Year and scored the fastest first goal in USWNT history.
Kealia Ohai Watt is not an obscure figure in the soccer world. She attended Alta High School in nearby Sandy, won four state titles with her youth soccer club, captured a national championship with the University of North Carolina and was the second overall pick in the NWSL College Draft after college. She later captained the Houston Dash from 2016 through 2020 before moving on.
That background is what made the omission sting. A club greeting a former player in its own backyard chose to address J.J. Watt by name and leave out the woman beside him, even though she has deep ties to Utah and to the sport that built her profile. The exchange also landed while the couple were in the spotlight as partial owners of Burnley F.C., which faced Real Salt Lake in the MLS game connected to the post.
Whether Real Salt Lake follows up is the unanswered part. Watt made his point in public, and he did it with enough detail to make the oversight hard to dismiss: the woman in the photo was Kealia Ohai Watt, not just someone in the frame.
