One might think that Billie Jean King would have made a lifetime enemy of Bobby Riggs by defeating him, but nothing could be further from the truth. Although they didn’t know each other personally before Riggs’ challenge, they developed a cheeky, almost-friendly rapport leading up to it — and after the match, they became close friends, and remained so until Riggs’ death in 1995 at the age of 77. They spoke on the phone fairly often, with the last of those calls coming the day before Riggs died. Riggs’ son, Larry, shared with Inside Edition the substance of that call in 2017: “She said, ‘Bobby, I want you to know I love you a lot.’ He said, ‘Billie, I love you too and we did something big together,’ and she said, ‘Bobby, we did.'”
In a 2023 Instagram post, King acknowledged Riggs’ birthday with a message for tennis fans everywhere. “As for Bobby and me, many though we were bitter enemies. Now, the truth was, we were friends. I’m thinking about you today on your birthday, Bobby, and I’ll be thinking about you again in September [on the 50th anniversary of the match]. Love you.”
