Miss Yeo, who became a Nominated Member of Parliament (NMP) last July, added: “We click... We just really enjoy each other.”
She said she hopes to have three kids just like her parents because of the close relationship she has with her siblings, Leonard, 32, and Gerard, 30.
Leonard was a former national swimmer and water polo player while Gerard was an ex-national junior swimmer and Singapore’s top triathlete in the 1990s.
Their mother died last year of a brain tumour.
Although she rarely talks about her relationship with Mr Purcell in mainstream media, it seems Miss Yeo is more open about it online. She posts photos of both of them on her Twitter and Facebook accounts.
According to a church website, Mr Purcell, who has three siblings, relocated to Singapore from Oklahoma with his family in 2004.
His parents, Joseph and Mary Purcell, are directors of the Rhema Bible Training Center Singapore.
Miss Yeo, the country’s most decorated athlete, is the only Singaporean to compete in four Olympic Games, starting with Barcelona in 1992.
That was two years after the then 11-year-old competed at the Beijing Asian Games.
By the time she ended her 17-year swimming career, Miss Yeo, who graduated from the University of Texas with honours in kinesiology and health education in 2003, had bagged 40 gold medals at the South-east Asia Games.
She retired three years ago and now works full time in New Creation Church’s youth ministry.
Autobiography
Her autobiography, On the Move: My Career, My Life, was released before the 2004 Athens Olympics – her last – and chronicles the milestones in her life and swimming career.
Last November, Miss Yeo told The Straits Times that she took on the challenge of being an NMP because she felt she could help contribute to Singapore sport.
“There was an opportunity and it’s something I see as an honour.
“If we want to be a top sporting nation, we need a change in mindsets. We need people to see the value of sports and we need to allow people to enjoy sports so that more will get involved.”
This article was first published in The New Paper.
