Richard Williams and Oracene Price have always supported Serena and Venus Williams, on and off the court
Serena Williams and Venus Williams have credited their parents, Richard Williams and Oracene Price, for their success on the court.
The sisters, widely regarded as two of the best tennis players of all time, were raised and coached by their parents in Compton, California, though the family later relocated to West Palm Beach, Florida, to further their tennis careers.
Following the final match of her career, Serena gave Richard and Oracene a sweet shout-out and said her tennis career would not have been possible without them.
“Thank you Daddy, I know you’re watching,” the 23-time Grand Slam champion said. “Thanks, Mom … It all started with my parents, and they deserve everything so I’m really grateful for them.”
Serena also thanked her sister, adding: “I wouldn’t be Serena if there wasn’t Venus, so thank you, Venus. She’s the only reason Serena Williams ever existed.”
The family’s story and the sisters’ rise to fame was chronicled in the 2021 movie King Richard, which is now streaming on Netflix. Will Smith gave an Academy Award-winning performance for portraying the family patriarch, while Aunjanue Ellis also earned multiple award nominations for her role as the matriarch.
In addition to critical praise, the film received endorsement from both sisters. “I love that it captured the innocence — the innocence we still hang on to, actually,” Venus told Entertainment Weekly.
“It’s kind of difficult for me to say, ‘Oh, this film shows me,’ ” Venus added. “Because me is Serena. Me is my sisters. And there’s no me without her, and I could have never done what I’ve been able to achieve on the court without her because I was also watching her and learning.”
“I feel completely different than Venus. Actually, I feel like the film actually tells her story in a way that no one can ever really tell what she went through in being the first Black player to really step out there,” Serena added. “You see the impact that it has had and all the people that are coming up after myself and Venus. There would be no Serena if there wasn’t a Venus.”
Here’s what to know about Serena and Venus Williams’ parents, Richard Williams and Oracene Price.
They met at a bus stop
Richard first met Oracene at a bus stop in Los Angeles in 1979. He was drawn in by “her big old gorgeous beautiful legs” and told her he wanted to marry her and have five girls together, he recalled to Sports Illustrated in 1999.
The couple married in 1980. They welcomed Venus on June 17, 1980, and Serena on Sept. 26, 1981. Richard and Oracene each came into their marriage with children from past relationships.
Oracene was previously married to Yusef Rasheed, and they had three daughters: Yetunde, Lyndrea and Isha. Yetunde was killed in a September 2003 drive-by shooting in Compton. She had three children and helped manage her sisters’ careers.
In an interview with PEOPLE in 2007, Serena said it was “still hard” for her to talk about her late older sister. “Yetunde and I were so close; she changed my diapers. But I finally came to an acceptance of things,” she said.
With his first wife, Betty Johnson, Richard shares five kids: daughters Sabrina and Reneeka and sons Richard III, Ronner and Reluss. He also has a son named Dylan with his third wife, Lakeisha Juanita Graham, and a son named Chavoita from another relationship.
In 2002, Richard and Oracene divorced after 22 years of marriage, citing irreconcilable differences.
They moved from California to Florida to support Serena and Venus’ careers
Serena and Venus began playing tennis in Compton at a young age, but the family relocated to West Palm Beach so they could attend Rick Macci’s tennis academy.
Macci, played by Jon Bernthal in King Richard, told Esquire about the close bond he built with the family. “Back in 1991 to ’94, it was really me and Richard against the world,” he said. “He was my best friend, and Venus and Serena were like family.”
He added: “They were like my daughters. And when you’re with someone every day, four, five hours a day, six days a week for four years, that’s a long time.”
Although both Richard and Oracene were focused on their girls’ budding talent as they grew up, they had different approaches to parenting. Macci told the New York Times that Oracene was “the calming force” while Richard “always had his foot on the gas.”
“I think her personality — she’s very, very calm, very low-key,” Macci said. “She was amazing with the girls. She wanted to make sure they were kids. She wanted to make sure that they had a teenage life and she did everything possible to make that just as important.”
The coach added that Oracene was the “backbone” and “the master puppeteer” behind her daughters’ success. “She was probably the best tennis mom ever. Because she let Richard do the heavy lifting, and she was Mom,” Macci added. “And that balance, all we can say is: How can you argue with the results?”
Richard was their coach
Richard’s vision for his daughters helped to propel them toward greatness. After seeing Romanian tennis player Virginia Ruzici win the 1978 French Open and take home $20,000, he came up with a 78-page plan for his future daughters to become tennis pros. Richard had not previously played the sport, but he taught himself by watching instructional videos.
Despite their fast success on the junior circuit, Richard pulled both girls out of junior tennis tournaments in 1991 before moving to Florida to train with Macci. This was partly due to racism the girls faced from other players and parents and partly out of Richard’s desire to have the girls focus equally on education and tennis. After nearly four years with Macci, Richard withdrew his daughters from the academy. Serena and Venus were going pro, and after Venus signed a $12 million contract with Reebok, Richard built three courts at their Florida home, where he would coach the girls himself.
“Richard and I had ups and downs over a lot of things,” Macci told Sports Illustrated in 1999. “But he’s always been an incredible father to those two girls. If he’d wanted more money, he could’ve had them playing more. But I can remember 50 times when he called off practice because Venus’ grades were down. They’d be in my office studying French, and I’d be saying, ‘Hey, we’ve got to work.’ ”
Though his methods have been called unconventional, the results are evident. At the 1999 U.S. Open, Serena won her first Grand Slam singles title at just 17 years old, making her one of the youngest female players to win a major. The following year, Venus won her first Grand Slam singles title at Wimbledon at age 20.
By February 2002, Venus reached the singles world No. 1 ranking. Serena reached the No. 1 spot in July of the same year, taking her older sister’s place.
Oracene financially supported their family
When Richard quit his job to focus solely on coaching his daughters, Oracene stepped up to financially support their family of seven.
“My dad at one point was working and then he stopped,” Serena said on Red Table Talk. “He’s like, ‘This is what we’re going to do. I’m not going to have a job. I’m gonna go with Venus and Serena, and train them every day.’ Now that would be impossible for me if my husband were to tell me that.”
Serena and Alexis Ohanian, a tech entrepreneur and co-founder of Reddit, tied the knot in 2017, and they share one daughter with a second baby on the way. “I’d be like, ‘I kinda worked my whole life. I’m trying to relax a little bit,’ ” Serena said, imagining what would happen if Ohanian stopped working.
“But she had to support seven people, as a family of seven,” she added, looking at her mom and sisters Venus, Isha and Lyndrea, who were also seated at the table with Will Smith.
“To have that faith and to have that back-end support, we wouldn’t have survived without that,” she shared.
Serena says Oracene is her “role model” as a mom
After welcoming her daughter Olympia Ohanian in September 2017, Serena gained a new appreciation for her mom. Weeks after her firstborn’s arrival, she shared a heartfelt letter to her mother on Reddit, calling Oracene “one of the strongest women” she knew.
The tennis pro praised her mom for being “so classy” and thanked her for setting a good example. “But mom, I’m not sure how you did not go off on every single reporter, person, announcer and quite frankly, hater, who was too ignorant to understand the power of a Black woman,” she wrote.
“Thank you for being the role model I needed to endure all the hardships that I now regard as a challenges — ones that I enjoy. I hope to teach my baby Alexis Olympia the same, and have the same fortitude you have had,” Serena continued. “Promise me, Mom, that you will continue to help. I’m not sure if I am as meek and strong as you are yet. I hope to get there one day. I love you dearly.”
Richard wrote a memoir
Richard published a memoir, Black and White: The Way I See It, in 2014. In it, the coach began with his upbringing in segregated Shreveport, Louisiana, and continued through his coaching career. However, the memoir wasn’t something he necessarily wanted to release.
“The only reason I released this is because these last seven years, Serena kept pushing me,” he told the New York Times, noting that he had written several autobiographical books, none of which had been published. “She said, ‘Publish something; I don’t care which one.’ I was about to burn them.”
He continued: “This is about my life. A lot of people thought I was writing about a bunch of tennis, backhands and forehands. This is about my life, and tennis was not a part of my life growing up. I think there are enough books about tennis.”
Oracene encouraged her kids to focus on their mental health
Venus, who has been partnered with BetterHelp to fund mental health initiatives since 2021, told PEOPLE she felt “really grateful” to her mom for putting an emphasis on therapy and well-being.
“It’s important to engage in therapy even before you might have something exactly to talk about, to work through and prepare yourself for anything that might come up in your life,” Venus told PEOPLE in 2022.
“My mom always told us that — you have to work on your mental strength. That was her theory of raising kids. … You also have to help them mentally be ready and prepared,” she added.
While talking to Marie Claire Italy in 2023, Serena said that Oracene seemed to feel “relief instead of excitement” after watching her play.
“My mother is always quite stoic and quite calm even when she gets very heated, like in those moments when she watches me, on the field, while I’m at the peak of adrenaline,” she said in an English translation of the interview, which was published in Italian.
Richard thinks Will Smith delivered a “wonderful” portrayal of him
Despite the infamous slap at the 2022 Academy Awards ceremony, Richard still appreciates Smith’s portrayal of him in King Richard.
“I’ll always stand by him,” he told Good Morning Britain in 2023. “I think he has done the best that he needed to do. But I would never be disgusted with Mr. Smith.”
When asked if the slapping scandal overshadowed the success of the film, Richard said: “No, he’s done a great deal for myself and my family. I think he did extremely well. It was very wonderful.”
