She was in the president’s box in 2023 when he won his 24th Grand Slam. The record goes back to 2012.
They are not friends, as far as anyone can document. There is no joint interview, no photo of the two of them together, no public exchange of any kind. What there is instead is a pattern of attendance. Martha Stewart has watched Novak Djokovic play some of the most important matches of his career from a few of the best seats at Arthur Ashe Stadium, and she has done it repeatedly since 2012.
The clearest proof came on September 10, 2023. An Associated Press photographer, Frank Franklin II, shot Stewart sitting in the president’s box next to Christie Brinkley. Below them, Djokovic had just beaten Daniil Medvedev for his 24th Grand Slam title and dropped to his knees on the court.
She has a HAR-TRU clay court at her farm in Bedford, New York, and she plays. So the tennis interest is real, not a one-night photo opportunity.
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A guest of the USTA president, September 2012
The record starts on September 6, 2012. Stewart went to the US Open men’s quarterfinals as a guest of USTA president Jon Vegosen and his wife Shari, and sat in the association’s president’s suite in Queens. Six days later she wrote about the night on The Martha Blog under the title “An Evening of Soup Dumplings and Tennis.”
The dumplings came first. She opened with a restaurant in Flushing, what she ate, the drive out to the courts. The tennis arrived lower down. She noted that Djokovic, the defending US Open champion that year, had beaten Juan Martin Del Potro 6-2, 7-6, 6-4 to reach his 10th straight Grand Slam semifinal. Two sentences, then she moved on.
She came back in 2013. An editorial photo archived through Alamy places her at the men’s final on September 9, when Rafael Nadal beat Djokovic 6-2, 3-6, 6-4, 6-1 for his 13th major. She said nothing publicly about that one either.
The night Djokovic broke the all-time Grand Slam record
The 2023 men’s final left the most evidence behind. The AP wire photo puts Stewart and Brinkley in the president’s box. The Roland Garros official website, writing up the final, said every suite at Arthur Ashe Stadium was packed with star power and listed Stewart by name alongside Nicole Kidman, Leonardo DiCaprio, Justin Timberlake, and Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Djokovic won 6-3, 7-6, 6-3. The second set alone took 104 minutes. The title was his 24th, one past Serena Williams’ Open Era record of 23 and level with Margaret Court’s all-time mark. At 36 he became the oldest US Open men’s champion of the Open Era, breaking a record Ken Rosewall had held since 1970.
When the last point ended, Djokovic knelt on the court and stayed down for a while. His coach Goran Ivanisevic put it this way to reporters:
“This is one of the biggest achievements in sports history. We’re not talking about tennis. We are talking generally in sport.”
Djokovic then pulled on a white jacket with the number 24 stitched on the chest and a shirt carrying Kobe Bryant’s image and the words “Mamba Forever,” a tribute he had ready before the match. He and his team did 24 push-ups in the locker room.
Stewart posted nothing about the night.
The Martharazzi, and the player she never mentions
A year later, at the 2024 men’s final, Stewart turned her phone on the crowd instead of the court. She photographed Taylor Swift from across the stadium, added Travis Kelce, Anna Wintour, and Jon Hamm, and put the lot on Instagram. Her caption:
“Just left the @USOpen where the tennis was really good but we were disappointed that our young American Fritz lost to a superior and even younger Italian player Sinner. Lots of celebrities pepper the stands and boxes. Take a look!!!”
Her followers started calling her the Martharazzi. The posts traveled. None of the coverage pointed out that she had been coming to this tournament from premium seating since 2012.
She returned in 2025 for the Jannik Sinner versus Carlos Alcaraz final, photographed in the president’s suite with Bruce Springsteen, Mindy Kaling, and Danny DeVito. By then her US Open attendance spanned at least five finals and quarterfinals over 13 years. Three of those nights had Djokovic on the court. He has never turned up in one of her posts.
The player American crowds spent years rooting against
Part of what makes the attendance worth noting is who she kept coming to see. For much of his career, Djokovic was the man New York crowds wanted to lose. When he faced Roger Federer at Arthur Ashe Stadium, the noise ran against him. In 2022 the federal government refused him entry over his COVID-19 vaccination status, and he missed a tournament he had already won three times.
He came back in 2023 and won the biggest title of his life. Stewart was in the president’s box when he did.
Where things stand in June 2026
Djokovic sits at No. 4 in the world with a 9-4 record this season. He reached the Australian Open final, lost to Carlos Alcaraz in four sets, and went out of the French Open in the third round. He has 101 ATP singles titles and is still chasing a 25th major at 38. The US Open starts again in late August.
Stewart watched him lose a final in 2013 and watched him make history in 2023, from roughly the same part of the same building. In between she wrote about soup dumplings and posted long-lens photos of pop stars. She has watched Novak Djokovic at his lowest and his highest on that court, and she has never said a word about him in public.
