paul skenes livvy dunne into a search box today and you get two different stories. One is a pitcher hunting for his old form; the other is a gymnast who quit at the top of her earning power. Everything below comes from what they have said on the record, plus league and school sources, checked on July 29, 2026.
| Detail | Paul Skenes | Livvy Dunne |
| Sport | Baseball, right-handed starter | Artistic gymnastics, all-around |
| Hometown | Fullerton, California | Hillsdale, New Jersey |
| Time at LSU | One season on the field, 2023, after transferring from the Air Force Academy | Five seasons, 2021 through 2025 |
| Now | Pittsburgh Pirates starter, number 30 | Retired competitor, brand, and media work |
| Biggest honor | 2025 National League Cy Young, unanimous | 2024 NCAA team title, LSU’s first |
| Relationship | Publicly acknowledged since August 2023. No engagement or marriage announced. |
Key Takeaways
- The two met through overlapping friend groups at LSU, not through a social media meet-cute, and the relationship became public in August 2023.
- Skenes won the 2025 Cy Young with all 30 first-place votes, then ran into the worst stretch of his career this spring.
- Through July 25, 2026, he sits at 9-9 with a 3.65 ERA and 149 strikeouts in 22 starts.
- Dunne retired on April 18, 2025, after a kneecap injury wrecked her fifth year.
- Neither has announced an engagement, a wedding, or a split. Anything you read to the contrary is not on the record.
How The Paul Skenes Livvy Dunne Story Started At LSU
Skenes landed in Baton Rouge in 2022 as a transfer from the Air Force Academy. His workload there had been close to absurd: catching on Sundays, hitting on Saturdays, and starting on Fridays. Dunne was already one of the most recognizable athletes on campus. Their circles overlapped through mutual friends, and that is how the introduction happened.
Paul Skenes, the Livvy Dunne Skenes talked about the relationship publicly for the first time with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in August 2023, a few weeks after the Pirates made him the first overall pick. He has been consistent about it since. Fame arrived with the relationship, and he has treated that as a cost of doing business rather than a project to manage. Readers who like this kind of origin story will find more in our athlete career profiles.
One detail worth keeping straight: they overlapped at LSU for a single competitive year. He left for pro ball in July 2023. She stayed two more seasons.
Skenes in 2026: a Cy Young winner Having a Human Season
The 2025 version of Skenes was close to unhittable. He finished 10-10 with a 1.97 ERA, the first sub-2.00 mark by a starting pitcher since 2022. His 216 strikeouts set a Pirates record for a right-hander. The Baseball Writers’ Association of America gave him all 30 first-place Cy Young votes on November 12, 2025. No pitcher had followed a Rookie of the Year season with a Cy Young since Dwight Gooden in 1985.
This season has been messier, and that is the part most write-ups skip.
| Season | W-L | ERA | IP | Strikeouts | WHIP |
| 2024 | 11-3 | 1.96 | 133.0 | 170 | 0.95 |
| 2025 | 10-10 | 1.97 | 187.2 | 216 | 0.95 |
| 2026, through July 25 | 9-9 | 3.65 | 120.2 | 149 | 1.06 |
He opened the year at a 1.98 ERA through nine starts. The next eleven came in at 4.94. In between sat a nine-start winless streak, from the middle of May into early July. For a pitcher who had never lost the plot that long, it was strange to watch.
Then he fixed it, mostly. Skenes went 3-0 with a 2.45 ERA in his first three starts after the break, including seven innings of one-run ball at Cleveland on July 19. A loss to the Cubs on July 25 stopped the run. He still made the National League roster for the All-Star Game at Citizens Bank Park on July 14, his third straight selection. Our sport news and match analysis follows the rest of the Pirates rotation as the deadline nears.
Dunne’s Gymnastics Career and the Injury That Ended It
Dunne came to LSU from Hillsdale, New Jersey, with an elite junior background and an audience that already dwarfed most college programs. She competed five seasons as an all-around gymnast, from 2021 through 2025, and she was on the roster when LSU won the program’s first NCAA team championship in 2024.
Her fifth year, granted through the extra eligibility that came out of the pandemic, lasted four meets. An avulsion fracture in her kneecap ended it. LSU finished third in the NCAA semifinals on April 17, 2025, and the next day she posted her goodbye: “Out, gymnastics. It’s been real… and of course forever, LSU!” ” She does not appear on LSU’s 2026 gymnastics roster. That chapter is closed.
The NIL Business She Built
The NCAA’s interim name, image, and likeness policy took effect on July 1, 2021, midway through Dunne’s freshman year, and few athletes were positioned better. She signed with a major sports agency within weeks and announced her first apparel deal that fall. By 2023 she was saying publicly that a single social media post had paid her more than $500,000.
Put that next to the ordinary case. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual wage for athletes and sports competitors was $62,360 as of May 2024. One post cleared roughly eight years of that.
She also spent the money forward. On July 6, 2023, she launched the Livvy Fund, a collective built to connect LSU women athletes with brands. Her reasoning was blunt at the time: “The collectives mostly go to the men’s sports here at LSU, and I just want to fight for equal NIL opportunities.”
Since retiring, she has kept the commercial side running, appearing in Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issues and, in March 2026, being reported as a recurring cast member on Fox’s Baywatch reboot. Skenes has his own crossover credit as one of three cover athletes on MLB The Show 25. That one belongs in our gaming coverage and release notes more than in a baseball column.
Where They Have Actually Appeared Together
The verified list is shorter than the internet suggests, which is worth saying plainly. These are the moments with dates attached:
- May 11, 2024: Dunne was at PNC Park for his major league debut against the Cubs.
- April 2025: Days after retiring, she said she was looking forward to traveling to Pittsburgh for the baseball season, something gymnastics had never allowed.
- April 16, 2025: ESPN’s long feature on Skenes treated the relationship as a settled part of his public life and quoted him on handling the attention that came with it.
Plenty of other sightings get passed around. Most cannot be traced back to either of them or to a source that named a date, so they are not here.
What Neither of Them Has Announced
No engagement has been announced. No wedding. And neither has said a word about a split. As of July 29, 2026, there is nothing from Skenes, from Dunne, from the Pirates, or from LSU that changes the picture.
That is a boring answer, and it is the accurate one. We hold gossip to the same sourcing bar as a box score, which is how the Gamerlume editorial team works in one sentence.
Conclusion
Paul Skenes Livvy Dunne have become one of the most recognizable young sports couples in America, but their public story remains grounded in verified facts rather than online rumors. They met through mutual friends at LSU, have openly acknowledged their relationship since 2023, and continue to support each other’s careers while pursuing very different paths.
As of July 2026, there has been no official announcement of an engagement, marriage, or breakup. The most reliable updates continue to come directly from the couple or trusted organizations, making it important to separate confirmed information from speculation. Fans can expect their careers—and their relationship—to remain in the spotlight as both continue building successful futures on and off the field. Our related guide, Mark Sanchez’s Wife Perry Mattfeld, goes further into this.
FAQ
Most people searching for Paul Skenes’ Livvy Dunne want a straight answer to this. The relationship has been publicly acknowledged since August 2023, and neither has announced a split. Nothing on the record as of July 29, 2026, says otherwise.
Through mutual friends at LSU, where their time overlapped for the 2023 season. He discussed it for the first time in an August 2023 interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
His 3.65 ERA through July 25, 2026, is nearly double last year’s. He did go 3-0 with a 2.45 ERA in his three starts after the All-Star break. He made his third straight All-Star team.
An avulsion fracture in her kneecap cut her fifth season to four meets. She announced her retirement on April 18, 2025.
She has never published a total. The one hard figure she gave publicly, in 2023, was more than $500,000 for a single post.
No. Skenes has described an ordinary campus introduction through friends. The social media attention came afterward.
