A pair of Marshall alums have landed a dream job skating professionally on a luxury cruise ship.
It’s a tale as old as time: Boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love. Boy spins girl around by girl’s ankle as girl’s head comes treacherously close to a sheet of ice, in a move known officially as the bounce spin, unofficially as the headbanger.
Professional pair skaters Alexis and J.D. Rappold’s love story is as unconventional as their career path, but the Huntington natives and Marshall grads can’t imagine life any other way. As they wrap up a figure skating contract with the Royal Caribbean cruise ship Liberty of the Seas, they reflect on the whirlwind that led them to a successful career on the ice.
“Looking back, it’s kind of crazy how everything fell into place,” said Alexis (Donahoe) Rappold. Both Alexis and J.D. began skating at a young age — Alexis was 5, and J.D. was 6. But while Alexis pursued figure skating, J.D. was an avid hockey player. In 2010, J.D., a former hockey player for the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, had just received an offer to try out for the Wheeling Nailers, a minor league team. He was home from college for the summer when his mom, Heidi Sowards, who happened to be Alexis’s figure skating coach, suggested the two try skating together. Surprisingly, it wasn’t a matchmaking ploy.
“I don’t think she had any ulterior motives,” J.D. laughed. “She just really wanted me to try pair skating.”
J.D., who had tried figure skating briefly as a child, hated the feel of figure skates at first. When he and Alexis would meet up to practice, he’d wear his hockey skates. Still, the duo recognized quickly that they had the potential to succeed in pair skating.
“We were actually pretty good right away,” J.D. said. “We knew that if we put time into it, it could work.”
After they skated together that summer, J.D. turned down the Nailers’ offer and transferred from UMBC to Marshall as he and Alexis took the plunge into pair skating. They practiced six days a week at the South Charleston Ice Arena and trained in Columbus with professional pair skater and U.S. national champion Lee Harris, all while Alexis completed her senior year of high school and J.D. studied at Marshall.
“It took me a while to look like a figure skater,” J.D. recalled. “Posture and flexibility are a big deal in figure skating. And in hockey, you have to have strength, so you lose a lot of that flexibility. Plus, in pair skating, it just takes time to mesh with each other.”
After about a year, though, J.D. and Alexis realized that their chemistry on the ice existed off the ice, too.
“Everyone around us could see that there was something between us, apparently,” Alexis remembered. “Our friends and our moms saw it before either of us did.”
The pair began dating during a hectic year of qualifying competitions for the 2012 U.S. Figure Skating Championship. If their story is beginning to sound familiar, it’s likely thanks to the 1992 romantic comedy The Cutting Edge, where a figure skater and hockey player team up professionally, and eventually romantically, to win the Olympic gold medal.
“We heard that a lot from the other competitors — ‘Oh, look, here comes The Cutting Edge,” J.D. laughed.
The pair competed at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in 2012 and 2013, concluding their competitive career as the No. 10 pairs team in the U.S. In 2013, they left competitive skating to allow Alexis to finish her degree at Marshall.
“Finishing our degrees was really important to both of us,” said J.D., who graduated in 2012 with a degree in exercise physiology and a minor in biomechanics. While at Marshall he was president of his fraternity, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, and started the university’s hockey club. He also served on the president’s council, Student Activities Programming Board and Interfraternity Council.
Alexis graduated with honors in 2015. She majored in accounting and was active in Beta Alpha Psi, an honors fraternity for accounting and finance. Her sophomore year, she was invited by Dixon Hughes Goodman to participate in its leadership academy and internship program, and the firm eventually offered her a full-time position. She accepted and continues to work part time for the firm between performances on the cruise ship.
“We were given incredible opportunities at Marshall,” Alexis said. “Just having that opportunity to connect with an accounting firm so early on was huge. At the business school, it was never just about exams. It was about making us well-rounded professionals. I had a lot of one-on-one support from my professors, and that was very helpful.”
Across campus in the School of Kinesiology, J.D. had a similar experience.
“At Marshall there’s a lot of focus on you as an individual,” he said. “Alexis and I were still competing when I was at Marshall, and my counselors were great about teaching me how to balance everything I had going on. The classes were smaller, which gave us that one-on-one time with professors.”
While Alexis finished her degree, J.D. worked as a personal trainer and exercise physiologist in Charleston. Although they were unable to devote much time to skating, their love for the ice — and dream of skating professionally — remained. When the couple began planning their wedding, only one location was the perfect fit.
“I was like, ‘Hey, why don’t we get married on the ice,’” J.D. recalled. “I was actually kidding. I was expecting Alexis to say, ‘Yeah, right, I don’t think so.’ But she was like, ‘Hmm, that could actually work.’”
Alexis had foam mats placed on the ice at the Charleston ice rink for the ceremony and reception.
“A lot of brides use Pinterest to plan their weddings, but there wasn’t much out there for me,” she said.
When it came time for the first dance, an enormous backdrop was moved aside, revealing an uncovered part of the rink, while Alexis changed into an all-white skating dress handmade by her mom. The couple performed their “first skate,” then changed back into their wedding attire for the rest of the reception.
“The wedding brought skating back into our lives,” J.D. said.
Soon, the couple began performing in shows at Canaan Valley Resort and the Greenbrier, resuming their training in their spare time. In 2017, they were offered a contract to tour Europe with Holiday on Ice, an opportunity they couldn’t pass up. Last June, they participated in a Columbus show called Skate It Forward, a fundraiser for the Ronald McDonald House, alongside some of the country’s best skaters including Gracie Gold, Karen Chen, Mariah Bell, Ross Miner and pairs team Deanna Stellato and Nathan Bartholomay.
Afterward, they embarked on the Liberty of the Seas, where for the past eight months the couple has dazzled cruise passengers with tricks like the bounce spin, head spin and throw double salchow.
“We love doing things that surprise, things that take the breath away from the audience,” Alexis said. J.D. clarified: “Things that freak people out.”
This spring, the pair will return to Huntington for two and a half weeks before their next Royal Caribbean contract, this time on the Harmony of the Seas, the second-largest cruise ship in the world. Their plans when they arrive home are to hug their dogs, Siberian Huskies Maya and Keetna, and get their fill of Huntington’s best hot dogs.
And although they’ll skate professionally as long as they’re able to, they said returning to the Huntington area someday would be a dream come true.
“Marshall is family, and Huntington is home,” J.D. said. “It’s always great to come back.”
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Katherine Pyles is a freelance writer and editor living in Huntington.
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Photos: (Above) The ice dancing duo both are Marshall alumni, J.D. in 2012 and Alexis in 2015. (Below) The couple married on the ice at the South Charleston Memorial Ice Arena on New Year’s Eve 2014.