The NHL’s 2019-20 season was suspended in March due to the coronavirus. As friends and families search for fun things to do inside, memes and challenges on social media have helped pass the time. Last week, Washington Capitals wives’ turned to Instagram to do something called the First Pic Challenge.
The challenge involved couples sharing their first photo together to their Instagram Story. Some images, like from Lauren Oshie and Paige Dowd, revealed their significant other’s former shaggy hairstyles. Others, like Jenner Jensen’s, revealed the astonishing amount of time the couples have been dating.
Jenner, the wife of Capitals defenseman Nick Jensen, shared a photo of herself with her future husband when they were children. The caption read, The first pic together. Although I think he was more into the hotdog than me.
“We actually were next-door neighbors and first met at daycare when we were five-years-old,” Jenner said in an interview.
Nick Jensen and Jenner Dowd grew up in Rogers, Minnesota. Rogers is a rapidly-growing suburb of Minneapolis with a population of 8,597, according to the 2010 census.
“It was me and Nick and about four other guys that hung out basically every day so we started as friends,” Jenner said. “I remember we were close friends early on and we would BMX to the movies or to Dairy Queen all the time. There would be nights that I would sneak out of my house and he would meet me outside his house just to hang out.”
That friendship grew through elementary school and eventually when the two reached middle school, Nick asked Jenner to be his girlfriend. Nick and Jenner were 12 and in the seventh grade.
Unlike most middle school couples, Nick and Jenner were able to stay together due to their deep friendship, close proximity to each other, and their love of sports. Both would later attend Rogers High School. It was there that they both became stars of their high school sports teams.
“He was super good at hockey in high school and I was good at basketball so we would go to each other’s games,” Jenner said. “I would wear his football and hockey jerseys on game day.”
Jenner became an All-American basketball player, scoring 1,634 points during her prestigious career. She was only the second women’s player ever in Rogers’ history to score 1,000 points.
Meanwhile, Nick was a star player on Rogers’ hockey team. During his final two seasons, Nick scored 20 and 14 goals respectively and had 64 points in 35 total games.
“Nick left Minnesota for Green Bay, Wisconsin, our senior year and we did the long-distance thing, which was hard but exciting at the same time,” Jenner said. “He used to surprise me by driving five hours home just to hang out for a night or two when he had the day off.”
Nick played two fantastic seasons with the USHL’s Green Bay Gamblers, tallying 49 points in 105 games. The puck-moving defenseman earned national attention from hockey scouts and was selected by the Detroit Red Wings in the fifth round of the 2009 NHL Draft.
“I ended up getting a basketball scholarship to St. Cloud State, and then Nick got offered a hockey scholarship there a year later,” Jenner said. “So we went to college together, too. Nick actually came to all my women’s basketball games in college if he didn’t have a game. My games were at 4:00 PM and his 7:00 PM so he would come to my games in his suit.”
During Nick’s freshman season in 2010, he became close friends with fellow freshman and seventh-round pick of the Los Angeles Kings, Nic Dowd. According to NHL.com, their dorm rooms were across the hall from each other.
Photo: Jenner Jensen
Nick scored 55 points in 77 games during his first two seasons and was named the Huskies’ alternate captain in 2012. Nick and Nic officially became roommates with two other teammates sophomore year.
“Nic [Dowd] set the whole thing up, so of course he took it upon it himself to take the nicest room in the house,” Nick Jensen joked to NHL.com.
Nick, Nic, and Jenner all became close friends. It’s also where Nic met his future wife Paige.
“My maiden name is Dowd, but I have no relation to Nic Dowd,” Jenner said. “In college, though, the three of us would hang out together and people asked us so many times if we were related and we just said yes.”
Nick Jensen and Nic Dowd helped lead St. Cloud State to the 2013 Frozen Four. Jensen was named WCHA Defensive Player of the Year as a junior. Dowd would later become captain of the team his senior year.
“Nick had the opportunity to sign with the Red Wings after his junior year, and I had graduated that spring,” Jenner said. “He asked me to move out to Michigan with him.”
During Nick’s first season pro, he played a majority of the season with the AHL’s Grand Rapids Griffins and several games with the ECHL Toledo Walleye.
In August 2014, Nick decided that Jenner was the only girl for him.
“He proposed in a field in our hometown that he pulled into when he was pretending the truck was running weird,” Jenner said. “It was dark out so he had all the pillows and wine and blankets all set up as a surprise. He told me to get my cellphone light out so he could see what he was doing and that’s when I saw him on one knee in the dark.”
Jenner said yes. They were 23-years-old at the time.
The two got married on August 22, 2015, at a country club in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. All of the neighborhood boys that Nick and Jenner grew up with in Rogers were in the wedding. Shawn Sexton, the couple’s best man, was Nick and Jenner’s best friend. Nic Dowd was one of the groomsmen.
Photo: Jenner Jensen/Kristen Anne Photography
Two years later, Nick became a full-time player in the NHL with the Detroit Red Wings, a rare bright spot on the team’s struggling backline. At the trade deadline the next season, the Capitals acquired Jensen for Madison Bowey and Jensen immediately agreed to a four-year, $10 million deal. The trade reunited Nick Jensen together with St. Cloud State teammate, Nic Dowd.
“I don’t think we ever really thought we’d play together again,” Jensen said to NHL.com. “I mean, we’d joke around when I was with Detroit and he was in L.A., like ‘Yeah, I’ll talk to [management] and see if we can get a trade for you.’ Then when the day finally came where I was getting traded and I found out who I was getting traded to, it was kind of crazy that it all happened like that.”
The two would combine to score the playoff-clinching goal for the Capitals in 2019. They both had never been to the NHL postseason before.
All the while, Nick and Jenner planned to start a family and this past March, Jenner gave birth to the couple’s first child, Lorenzo. The couple also has a dog, Murphy.
During their time together, Nick and Jenner had their fair share of dumb fights. “We almost broke up over games of Monopoly and cribbage,” Jenner said laughing. But their love story has stood the test of time.
“I think what brought us together, in the beginning, was our similarities,” Jenner said. “We have the same sense of humor but also were both extremely competitive, had our own sports and goals that we wanted to achieve. I also think growing up together allowed us to experience each other through all of the awkward stages, middle school, and high school drama, successes, and failures. As kids, we would be there for each other through good times and bad, not knowing how much of an impact it actually had on us. We definitely had ups and downs but I think in the end neither of us could picture doing life without the other.”
Headline photo: Jenner Jensen/Kristen Anne Photography
