Mary Lou Retton Won Gold 40 Years Ago Today: Look Back at the Historic Moment and Her Life Now

Mary Lou Retton was the first American woman to win a gold medal in Olympic gymnastics

While her peers were busy learning how to drive, 16-year-old gymnast Mary Lou Retton was making history at the 1984 Olympic Games.

During a time when the sport was dominated by Eastern European countries, she became the first American woman to win a gold medal in individual all-around gymnastics. She also took home more medals than any other athlete at the 1984 Olympics.

According to the International Olympic Committee, the West Virginia native grew up watching gymnastic stars like Nadia Comaneci and dreamed of one day competing on the world stage. "I said to my mom, 'I'm going to go to the Olympics one day. I'm going to win the Olympics,' " Retton recalled to the Christian Broadcasting Network in 2013. "She patted me on the shoulder and said, 'Sure, honey. Sure.' "

Retton kept that promise and started training with Béla and Márta Károlyi, who had coached Comaneci. She quickly made a name for herself in the gymnastics world and was selected to represent the United States at the 1984 Olympics. Though a knee injury almost kept her from competing, Retton pushed through and recovered in time to score perfect 10s on both floor exercise and vault, earning her that history-making gold medal on Aug. 3, 1984.

“My coach Bela Karolyi looked at me and said, ‘Mary Lou, you need to give a 10,' " Retton told  PEOPLE in July 2024. "He’d never said that before. I was like, ‘You’re putting pressure on me? I’ll show you!’ ”

So what happened to Mary Lou Retton since that historic moment? Let's take a look at that record-breaking win and her life after the 1984 Olympics.

She was inspired by Nadia Comaneci

Prior to Retton's game-changing performance, Olympic gymnastics was largely dominated by Eastern European countries, with Romania's Nadia Comaneci being a standout star. According to Retton, her passion for the sport was greatly inspired by Comaneci's multiple wins at the 1976 Olympics.

"I was 8 years old ... and totally glued to the TV set watching Nadia Comaneci," she told CBN. "She was my gymnastics role model ... That was really when the seed was planted in me."

In a 1984 interview with The New York Times, Retton said that her mother, Lois Retton, enrolled her in acrobatics when she was 4 years old because she was a "hyper" kid. She started gymnastic training when she was 7 and eventually caught the eye of her hero's former coaches, the Károlyis. Retton moved from her hometown of Fairmont, W. Va., to Houston when she was 14 to train with the couple.

"We weighed the pros and cons and decided to give it a shot," Retton told CBN. "Even at 14, I remember telling my parents, I didn't want to be wondering the rest of my life what could have been, what if, so I wanted to give it a shot."

She underwent knee surgery just weeks before the 1984 Olympics

Retton's Olympic dream almost didn't come true. Six weeks before the games were set to begin in Los Angeles, she had arthroscopic surgery after a piece of cartilage broke off in her right knee. The joint had been bothering her all year, but when it locked up during a rehearsal, she knew something was seriously wrong.

Retton, her family and her coaches kept the last-minute procedure a secret until a 1994 interview with the Los Angeles Times.

“We did three months of rehabilitation in two weeks,” she told the outlet. “In gymnastics, we’re vaulting, we’re 10 and 11 feet up in the air, we’re coming down on our legs. I mean, to get back into that kind of shape that fast is just unheard of. But I remember when the doctor gave me the release, saying, ‘Let’s land on it, let’s see if this knee is going to hold up.’ It was a vault with a front-handspring, and I landed it.”

She recovered just in time to compete.

She scored perfect 10s on the floor exercise and vault

During the 1984 Olympics, Retton competed against Romanian gymnast Ecaterina Szabo in the individual all-around competition. The New York Times reported that if Retton had scored a 9.95 on vault, the two gymnasts would have tied for gold — but she didn't. Instead, Retton beat Szavbo by a mere 0.05 points and scored perfect 10s on both the floor exercise and vault.

“You can see on the video that I was smiling before my feet touched the floor,” she told PEOPLE in 2024. “The Pauley Pavilion was shaking with all the cheering. They were all shouting, ‘Ten! Ten! Ten!’”

She was the first American woman to win gold in gymnastics

Those perfect 10s earned Retton a spot in history. She became the first American woman to win an Olympic gold medal in gymnastics. The gymnast later told the Los Angeles Times that the whole experience felt unreal.

“I slept with my medal under my bed that night,” Retton said. “The first thing when I got up in the morning, I checked to see if it wasn’t a dream.”

She won more medals than any other athlete at the 1984 Olympics

Gold isn't the only hardware Retton took home from the 1984 Olympics. She also won silver medals in the vault and team all-around competitions, as well as two bronze medals for her performances on the uneven bars and floor.

Her grand total of five medals made her the most decorated athlete at the 1984 Olympics, solidifying her spot as one of America's greatest gymnasts.

Retton was named both Sportswoman of the Year by Sports Illustrated and Amateur Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press. She was also crowned the United States champion in 1985 and was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 1997.

''She's one hell of a competitor," U.S. women's team's then-coach Don Peters told The New York Times in 1984. ''As the pressure gets greater, Mary Lou gets greater.''

She retired in 1986

Retton announced her retirement from competitive gymnastics at just 18 years old.

“I was ready,” she told NBC Sports in 2016. “I knew that I was not going to be one of those athletes that’s just hanging onto the sport and couldn’t retire, couldn’t let it go. I wanted people to remember me as a winner and as a champion."

After officially retiring her leotard, Retton dabbled in broadcasting and advertising. She became the first woman to appear on the front of a Wheaties cereal box, ran a children's TV show titled Mary Lou's Flip Flop Shop and wrote a book called Gateways to Happiness. She also competed on Dancing With the Stars in 2018.

“It was so silly to think, ‘I’m going to win the Olympics and my life will go back to being normal, ’ ” she told PEOPLE of her fame in 2024. “That didn’t happen. My level of fame was crazy.”

She has four daughters

In 1990, Retton married Shannon Kelley, a former quarterback for the University of Texas. They welcomed four daughters together: Shayla, McKenna, Skyla and Emma.

The former gymnast announced in 2018 that she and Kelley had divorced after 27 years of marriage. She told PEOPLE that even though she felt alone during the divorce, she was still on good terms with her ex-husband.

“It’s something that had really needed to happen for a long time,” Retton said. “We still love one another, but we weren’t great together anymore.”

Related: Mary Lou Retton's 4 Children: All About Shayla, McKenna, Skyla and Emma

She was hospitalized in the fall of 2023 and is on the road to recovery

Retton told Entertainment Tonight that she underwent a "scary" lung-related episode in October 2023 that deprived her brain of oxygen. She was almost put on life support, and her family was told to prepare for the worst.

"Girl, I should be dead," the Olympic athlete told PEOPLE. “The doctors told [my daughters] to come to say their goodbyes. They prayed over me, and McKenna said, ‘Mommy, it’s OK, you can go.’ I didn’t have much of a relationship with my mother, but I can’t imagine what that was like, to watch their mom on her deathbed.”

After spending a month in the intensive care unit, the Olympic athlete said on the Today show that she was diagnosed with a rare form of pneumonia and was recovering at home with a portable oxygen apparatus.

“My lungs are so scarred," she shared with PEOPLE. "It will be a lifetime of recovery. My physicality was the only thing I had and it was taken away from me. It’s embarrassing.”

Leaning on her family and learning that her daughters had raised almost $500,000 to cover her uninsured medical costs helped Retton get through the tough times.

"I have a lot to look forward to," Retton told ET. "I know that."

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