Kit Roberts
A NASCAR driver has said she met her husband when she was 14 and he was 18 - and he sent an eyebrow-raising DM to her when she was still a minor.
Natalie Decker spoke to the Speedway Sessions podcast, and revealed what her husband Derek Lemke said to her when she was 'crushing on him hard' as a teenager.
Decker said that she had been racing in Minnesota and saw Derek while waiting to pick up their pit passes.
“I was 14 years old and I went to his home track at Elko, and he was a few people in front of me in line checking in to get your pit pass," Decker recalled.
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“And he was wearing a baby blue Bauer hat – hockey brand – backwards. And I look at my dad, and I said, ‘Do you think that’s a hockey player AND a race car driver? Because if that’s the case, I will marry that guy.’ And my dad was like, ‘Oh, whatever, whatever.'”
She went on to reveal that after the race she had met Lemke and his dad in the bar, saying: "I didn’t realize that Derek was like four years older than me. So I was like, ‘Well, this isn’t going to work. He’s 18. I’m 14.’"
Decker described how she had been 'crushing on him hard' over the following season, before they met at Oktoberfest as the season was drawing to a close.
"And like he now knows I’m like obsessed, madly in love," she recalled. “Like I think he’s the coolest guy, I think he’s so cute.
“Like I’m crushing on him hard, and I’m just like this little girl to him at this point. He has a girlfriend, he’s graduated high school. So like it’s weird, right?"
Decker recalled how six months after Oktoberfest, she got a message from him on Instagram.
She said: "He was like, ‘Call me when you’re 18.’ And I said, ‘Bet, I will.’ I was like OK, deal… I’m pretty sure he still had a girlfriend when he told me that.”
Podcast host Matt Tifft seemed horrified by the story, saying: “Whoa! Is that grooming? I feel like that’s grooming.”
Decker went on to recall how Lemke had then messaged her after she turned 18.
“He’s like, ‘How’s it going?’ And it was Valentine’s Day," she said.
She added: "So dad, if you’re watching this, I’m so sorry, but, my mom already knows about it. So, I’ll say it. I sent him a very cute picture of my cute little butt.
"And I said, ‘Happy Valentine’s Day, Derek, What’s my present?’ We never stopped talking since that day.”
The pair would go on to marry in December 2023.
Tifft appears to have since deleted a video of the interaction from his social media account due to the response.