Anyone who has watched a tennis champion thank Billie Jean King during a trophy speech has probably wondered why one name keeps echoing through the sport. The short version is 39 Grand Slam titles, according to Billie Jean King’s official career record — but the fuller answer involves equal prize money, a women’s tour that almost didn’t happen, and a 1981 public outing that she turned into a lifetime of advocacy. This is how her tennis, her activism, and her marriage to Ilana Kloss fit together today.
Grand Slam titles: 39 (12 singles) · Wimbledon titles: 20 · Born: November 22, 1943 · Wife: Ilana Kloss, married 2018 · Battle of the Sexes: Defeated Bobby Riggs, 1973
Quick snapshot
- King’s 39 Grand Slam titles break down into 12 singles, 16 women’s doubles, and 11 mixed doubles (official Grand Slam record).
- She beat Bobby Riggs in straight sets in the 1973 Battle of the Sexes, the match detailed in her official match account.
- Her personal life has a stable center: Ilana Kloss, her wife since 2018. (official Grand Slam record)
- King’s exact net worth is not publicly disclosed; published estimates vary.
- Whether Larry King remarried after his 1987 divorce from Billie Jean King is not confirmed in the available record.
- Ilana Kloss is sometimes tangled up in searches about Bobby Riggs’s wife, but no verifiable evidence supports that link.
- The 1973 Battle of the Sexes — September 20, Houston Astrodome, King at 29 against Riggs at 55 — is the hinge of her public legacy (HISTORY’s match account).
- The equal-pay fight she carried to the U.S. Open in 1973 set a standard the rest of the sport eventually followed (Biography.com’s King–Riggs profile).
- The former Fed Cup now carries King’s name, and her decades-long partnership with Ilana Kloss keeps her personal story in the public eye.
- Younger fans keep rediscovering the 1973 match; every anniversary resets the argument about what her win actually changed.
Seven facts that keep surfacing in searches about King, and one pattern: the numbers people remember are never just numbers.
| Detail | Record |
|---|---|
| Born | November 22, 1943 — Long Beach, California, U.S. |
| Real name | Billie Jean Moffitt; King from her 1965 marriage |
| Grand Slam titles | 39 — 12 singles, 16 women’s doubles, 11 mixed doubles |
| Wimbledon titles | 20 overall |
| Wife | Ilana Kloss, married 2018 |
| Children | None |
| Battle of the Sexes | Defeated Bobby Riggs, 1973 |
The table tracks the numbers that anchor her story.
Why is Billie Jean King so famous?
Fame in tennis is usually measured in trophies. King’s is measured in what the trophies changed: a women’s tour with real prize money, a Grand Slam event that pays women equally, and a public life that made room for LGBTQ athletes before most of the sport was ready.
What is Billie Jean King’s real name?
Billie Jean King was born Billie Jean Moffitt on November 22, 1943, in Long Beach, California. The surname the world knows came from a 1965 marriage, not from a tennis club registry (Biography.com’s King–Riggs profile).
She grew up as Billie Jean Moffitt, then chose to compete as Billie Jean King after marrying Larry King in 1965. She kept the name after their 1987 divorce, and it stuck for a simple reason: by then, “King” was already on the trophies, the headlines, and the equal-pay petitions.
The implication: the name is a choice, not a birthright — and it became the banner under which she fought.
What happened in the 1973 Battle of the Sexes?
- King won in straight sets, 6–4, 6–3, 6–3 — the scoreline people still quote.
- She entered the match with 10 major singles titles already collected (HISTORY’s retrospective).
- Around 90 million viewers watched globally, according to BBC Sport’s retrospective on the match.
The setting was the Houston Astrodome, and the stakes were a winner-take-all $100,000 purse — a sum that made the match feel less like sport and more like a public referendum on women’s tennis. The match is widely described as a significant moment in the second-wave women’s movement, a rare point where a tennis score became a social statistic (Britannica’s Battle of the Sexes account). The U.S. Open had already become the first Grand Slam to award equal prize money in 1973; Wimbledon took until 2007 to follow (Biography.com’s King–Riggs profile).
King didn’t just win the match; she won the argument attached to it. Every time a female player collects an equal paycheck at a major, she’s standing on a 1973 straight-sets victory.
What is the Billie Jean King Cup?
- The Billie Jean King Cup is the international women’s team competition, formerly the Fed Cup.
- The renaming became official in 2020, a formal capstone to King’s influence on the sport.
- It’s the tennis equivalent of a stadium named after an athlete: a permanent acknowledgement that the event’s modern shape is her doing.
The Cup’s name is the kind of honor most athletes only get with a building attached, after retirement. King got it while still active as a public figure — and the trophy itself keeps her name in front of a new generation of players every season.
Was Michael Jackson’s ‘Billie Jean’ about Billie Jean King?
No. The 1983 Michael Jackson hit shares a first name with King, not a story. The song’s title character is fictional; the tennis star has no connection to it.
The question lingers because King’s name carries so much cultural weight that people assume the biggest “Billie Jean” in pop culture must be connected. The real connection runs the other way: King’s 1973 match did more for women’s sports than any pop song could.
Was Billie Jean King LGBTQ?
Yes. King is lesbian — a fact she did not announce on her own schedule. In 1981, a palimony suit filed by her former partner Marilyn Barnett made the relationship public, and King subsequently became identified as a pioneering LGBTQ sports figure (Wikipedia’s King biography).
How did Billie Jean King come out?
- The trigger: a 1981 palimony lawsuit from Marilyn Barnett, King’s former partner.
- The timing: at the height of King’s visibility, years after her 1973 peak.
- The result: King was publicly outed, paid a personal and professional price, and later built an advocacy platform on the experience.
The 1981 episode is the part of King’s story that highlight reels skip. She had spent the 1970s fighting for women’s tennis to be taken seriously; the outing forced her to fight for something far more personal, and it made her a public representative of LGBTQ athletes decades before that was a comfortable role.
What this means: King’s sexuality is not a sidebar to her tennis career. It’s the reason her legacy includes an activism component that most champions never have to develop.
Does Billie Jean King have a wife now?
Yes. King’s wife is Ilana Kloss, a former professional tennis player from South Africa. The couple married in 2018 after decades together, and neither of King’s marriages included children (Wikipedia’s King biography).
Before Kloss, King was married to Larry King — no relation to the talk-show host — from 1965 to 1987. That earlier marriage is where the “King” in her name comes from. A recurring search mix-up: Ilana Kloss is King’s wife, not Bobby Riggs’s. No verifiable evidence in the gathered sources identifies Kloss as Riggs’s wife (Britannica’s Battle of the Sexes account).
Did Billie Jean King’s ex-husband remarry?
Whether Larry King remarried after his 1987 divorce from Billie Jean King is not confirmed in the sources this article draws on. His later life is largely absent from the public record about his ex-wife.
It’s one of the questions that keeps appearing in search logs, and the honest answer is that there is no authoritative record in the top sources covering King’s career.
The takeaway: some biographical questions simply lack a sourced answer, and this is one of them.
What is the age difference between Billie Jean King and her wife?
How old is Billie Jean King’s wife?
Billie Jean King: born November 22, 1943 · Ilana Kloss: born March 22, 1956 · Difference: about 12 years and 4 months, King older
Line up the birthdates and the gap is straightforward. King was born in 1943, Kloss in 1956, which makes King the older partner by about 12 years and 4 months. As of May 2026, that puts King at 82 and Kloss at 70.
The catch: an age gap like this matters less in a decades-long partnership than it does in the search results, where “how old is Billie Jean King’s wife” is one of the most common ways people find both women’s names.
Did Billie Jean King have a child?
No. As the marriage section above notes, King has no children — neither from her marriage to Larry King (1965–1987) nor from her marriage to Ilana Kloss, her wife since 2018.
For fans who search “Billie Jean King children” or “does Billie Jean King have a daughter,” the answer is the same: no. Her legacy is carried by athletes she inspired, not by a tennis dynasty of her own.
How wealthy is Billie Jean King?
King’s exact net worth is not publicly disclosed, and published estimates vary so widely that they’re more useful as a temperature check than a number. What is documented is the financial trail she blazed: in 1971, she became the first female athlete to earn more than $100,000 in prize money in a single season (HISTORY’s retrospective).
Two years later came the winner-take-all $100,000 purse against Bobby Riggs — a sum that tied directly to her argument that female players deserved the same pay as men. King’s post-playing career turned her into a full-time advocate: she helped found the Women’s Sports Foundation, pushed for equal pay at every major, and kept her name attached to the team competition that now bears it.
Who is the richest woman in tennis?
Serena Williams is generally cited as the richest woman in tennis. King’s wealth is not in that league — and her influence is the reason the league exists.
The richest-player title and the most-influential-player title are different things. Williams’s commercial success was built on the professional women’s tour King helped create, which is why the WTA’s founding is the more important financial story in women’s tennis history.
What is John McEnroe’s net worth?
- Public estimates put John McEnroe’s net worth at approximately $100 million.
- That figure is often searched alongside King’s because both names anchor the same era of American tennis history.
The comparison is a useful reminder: even the most famous players of King’s generation made a fraction of what today’s top players earn, which is exactly the gap she spent her career trying to close.
Where does Billie Jean King live today?
Public accounts consistently place King’s primary residence in New York City, where she lives with Ilana Kloss. Exact addresses are not published — a standard privacy practice for a public figure of her stature.
New York is also the city of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, the home of the U.S. Open, which carries her name. It’s a rare case where a legend’s address and her monument are in the same place.
The implication: King’s home and her legacy share the same city — the couple’s New York base keeps her close to the sport’s American center of gravity.
Billie Jean King vs Bobby Riggs: the numbers that made history
One matchup, around 90 million viewers, and a $100,000 purse: the 1973 showdown still shapes how both players are remembered.
| Detail | Billie Jean King | Bobby Riggs |
|---|---|---|
| Age at the September 20, 1973 match | 29 | 55 |
| Wimbledon titles won in 1939 | — | 3 — singles, doubles, and mixed doubles (BBC Sport’s retrospective) |
| The 1973 result | Won 6–4, 6–3, 6–3 | Lost in straight sets |
The table shows how drastically the match’s context differed.
The catch: Riggs was a former Wimbledon champion, but by 1973 he was 55, not a current player. King, at 29, was the active champion — which made the win a confirmation of the obvious to tennis insiders and a revelation to everyone else.
Career timeline: 1943 to today
King’s career chronology is one of the most heavily documented in tennis. The milestones below follow Wikipedia’s King biography, with match-level details cross-checked against the official and archival sources cited above.
- 1943 — Born Billie Jean Moffitt in Long Beach, California.
- 1961 — Won her first Grand Slam title, the Wimbledon women’s doubles with Karen Hantze.
- 1965 — Married Larry King.
- 1966 — Won the first of her Wimbledon singles titles.
- 1971 — Became the first female athlete to earn more than $100,000 in prize money in a single season.
- 1973 — Founded the WTA and beat Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes.
- 1981 — After Marilyn Barnett’s palimony suit, King publicly acknowledged the relationship and became identified as lesbian.
- 1987 — Divorced Larry King.
- 2006 — The USTA National Tennis Center was renamed in her honor.
- 2009 — Received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
- 2018 — Married Ilana Kloss.
- 2020 — The Fed Cup was renamed the Billie Jean King Cup.
What’s confirmed — and what’s still unclear
Every item below is documented in the article above. The balance between what is known and what is not is exactly where most searches about King get fuzzy.
Confirmed facts
- King was born Billie Jean Moffitt on November 22, 1943, in Long Beach, California, per her official career record.
- She won 39 Grand Slam titles: 12 singles, 16 women’s doubles, 11 mixed doubles, as listed on the official Grand Slam record.
- She beat Bobby Riggs in straight sets in the 1973 Battle of the Sexes, confirmed by her official match account.
- She married Ilana Kloss in 2018 and has no children, according to Wikipedia’s King biography.
- She was publicly identified as lesbian after Marilyn Barnett’s 1981 palimony suit, as documented by Wikipedia’s King biography.
- The Fed Cup was renamed the Billie Jean King Cup in 2020, a capstone to her influence.
What’s unclear
- King’s exact net worth; published estimates vary.
- Whether Larry King remarried after his 1987 divorce from Billie Jean King.
- John McEnroe’s exact net worth; public estimates hover around $100 million.
- King’s exact residence address; New York City is the commonly cited primary residence.
- The precise global audience of the 1973 match; BBC Sport gives an “around 90 million” estimate.
- Any link between Ilana Kloss and Bobby Riggs’s personal life; no verifiable evidence supports the confusion.
Quotes that frame her legacy
“Pressure is a privilege.”
— Billie Jean King, as quoted in BBC Sport’s retrospective on the 1973 match
The Battle of the Sexes is widely described as a significant moment in the second-wave women’s movement — a rare point where a tennis score became a social statistic.
— Context from Britannica’s Battle of the Sexes entry
The first quote is the one King has repeated for decades; the second is why it matters. Together they explain why her legacy is argued about in cultural history books, not just tennis record books.
Billie Jean King’s 39 Grand Slam titles are the easy part of her story; the hard part is what she did with the platform they gave her. She survived a 1981 outing she didn’t get to script, spent years fighting for equal prize money, and formalized her partnership with Ilana Kloss in 2018 — which is to say, she kept the frontier moving long after she stopped winning trophies. For the next generation of women’s tennis players, the implication is clear: the match that matters is rarely the one on center court — it’s the one about who gets paid, who gets to be public, and who gets to write their own story.
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Frequently asked questions
Who founded the Women’s Tennis Association?
King was a founding force behind the WTA in 1973, alongside other leading players of the era. The association is the reason women’s tennis has a unified tour and, eventually, equal prize money at the majors.
How many Grand Slam singles titles did Billie Jean King win?
King won 12 Grand Slam singles titles, part of her 39-title career total across singles, women’s doubles, and mixed doubles.
When did Billie Jean King receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom?
King received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009, in recognition of a career that combined athletic achievement with civil-rights advocacy.
What is the Women’s Sports Foundation?
The Women’s Sports Foundation is a nonprofit organization King helped create to advance the lives of women and girls through sport. It was set up to address exactly the gap King faced in the 1970s: fewer opportunities, less funding, and almost no visibility for women’s sports.
What is the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center?
It is the home of the U.S. Open, renamed in King’s honor in 2006.
What was Billie Jean King’s first Grand Slam title?
Her first Grand Slam title was the 1961 Wimbledon women’s doubles, won with Karen Hantze.
Victoria Hayes is Editor-in-Chief at Aussie Wire Hub, overseeing editorial standards, publication decisions and corrections.