Almost a decade since meeting each other and eight years of dating, Camille Kostek says she will never forget when her relationship with Rob Gronkowski was put to its biggest test.
This week, on SiriusXM podcast “Under The Swimfluence,” the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit model spoke of the scary moment when Gronkowski suffered a seemingly career-ending injury in 2013.
Kostek, 30, and Gronkowski, 33, were “dating less than a month” at the time when she was a Patriots cheerleader and her soon-to-be “certified boyfriend” was one of the top tight ends in the league for New England.
“He took a big hit that headlines were saying was a career-ending injury,” she recalled of the 2013 game against the Browns in which Gronkowski tore his ACL and MCL.
Kostek, standing with the rest of the cheerleaders, felt her coach grab her shoulders.
“Gronk!,” her coach yelled. “That can’t be Gronk!”
In a wave of shock, Kostek was “trying not to cry” as she could see through Gronkowski’s helmet, him painfully saying “help” while he was down on the field.
“It was like slow motion,” she said. “I wanted to throw my pom-poms and go on the field and rip his helmet off and do something. Do something. Anything.”
Despite the frightening season-ending injury, Kostek gained insight into the commitment of dating an NFL player and said this incident “set up a recipe for a long-lasting relationship” — one that has only continued to grow.
“I learned within a few weeks of just getting to know Rob, what it was going to take to pursue a relationship with someone in the NFL,” she said.
With the knee injury came rehab, sleeping in a recliner, helping Gronkowski change his clothes and keep up with personal hygiene. These were things that enabled them “to really get close and become very serious very quickly.”
At the time, Gronkowski was also working with a full team of physical therapists, she said, though spending “24/7” together quickly sowed the seeds of an emotional connection that carried them through this relationship track they were suddenly on.
The pair “definitely talk” about getting engaged, Gronkowski recently told People in January. But the idea has been on hold he said because “we’re both super busy with our careers right now.”
However, with Kostek’s birthday and Valentine’s Day this month, Gronkowski said “Maybe some magic will happen. … [It’s] going to have to eventually happen.”