For 18 months, Amanda Balionis said nothing while the internet said everything. On December 31, 2025, she finally spoke, and that too with a single photograph.

“To another year of looking at each other like this 😍🥹,” Balionis wrote, as the image showed her wrapped in an embrace with Peter Engen, wine bottles glowing in the background, and fairy lights casting a soft haze over a candlelit dinner.

Engen, a Nantucket-based luxury real estate agent and former professional skier, posted his own story moments earlier. “This past year brought the best surprise yet, @balionis,” he wrote.

The mutual tags. The matching timestamps. The deliberate symmetry of New Year’s Eve. The timing of this reveal carries significance as Balionis enters 2026 having weathered one of the most turbulent stretches of her career—not on camera, but off it.

She was married to former college and NFL quarterback Bryn Renner, with the couple marrying in 2022, but fans first spotted her without her wedding ring in February 2024. By March, she had quietly removed all references to her married surname from her social media accounts. The silence invited speculation about her separation. The speculation invited chaos, and then came the haywire Rory McIlroy rumors.

When McIlroy filed for divorce from Erica Stoll on May 13, 2024, stating that their marriage was “irretrievably broken,” the golf world turned its attention to Balionis. The reasons were plenty. A post-round interview at the Wells Fargo Championship, where fans noted a strong, flirtatious dynamic between the two. A warm embrace at the Canadian Open that went viral. Soon, whispers became headlines. US Weekly eventually reported the two shared “just a professional relationship.”

McIlroy reconciled with his wife, Stoll, by late June, stating that staying together is the best thing for them to move forward as a family. But the damage to Balionis’s public narrative had already been done. Her interviews with McIlroy got unnecessary attention after that. For instance, fans called their interaction awkward after the Irish golfer won the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am this year, and their interaction during the 2025 Masters also turned heads.

However, neither Rory McIlroy nor Amanda Balionis ever addressed these rumors, not even once. Instead, they poured themselves into work, with the golfer having a historic season and Amanda doing what she does best.

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Amanda Balionis channeled turbulence into purpose

The 39-year-old logged 104,119 miles in 2025 alone—219 hours in the air, 42 cities across seven countries. She spent 19 consecutive weeks on the road covering the PGA Tour before pivoting to NFL sideline duties in the fall. Even at the 2025 Ryder Cup, where fans weaponized her name in mocking chants directed at McIlroy, she kept her composure.

Off the course, Balionis leaned into her nonprofit, Puppies & Golf. The organization she founded in 2020 crossed $600,000 in total donations by late 2025. A January fundraiser in San Diego raised $119,293—$30,917 of which went directly to shelters impacted by the Los Angeles wildfires. She launched the charity’s first-ever summer camp in July, partnering with First Tee–Greater Charlotte to introduce young girls to the game.

Work became her answer. Silence became her shield. Now, this photograph offers something different: permission to move forward.

Engen represents a clean break from the sports industry spotlight, as he is someone who built a career selling $44 million estates on Nantucket, rather than chasing trophies or managing headlines. For a woman whose personal life became tabloid fodder without her consent, that contrast feels intentional.

The rumors are done. The reset is real. And Amanda Balionis isn’t hiding anymore.