Getty Image / Brian Bielmann / AFP
Koa Rothman was paddling out at Waikiki Beach with his girlfriend Lydia Free who is a model and influencer. He shared a video of the two tandem surfing the knee-high waves in crystal clear waters and a curious sea turtle swam up to see them as they sad lazily on top of their board together.
The video starts with Koa Rothman and his girlfriend Lydia Free on the beach. He gives her a quick rundown of how to stand up on their massive longboard. His girlfriend has over 300K followers on Instagram, close to as many followers as Koa Rothman has, and often poses in bikinis for swimwear companies. But she doesn’t seem to be as comfortable on a board as Koa or his older brother Makua who is one of the best big wave surfers on earth.
The sea turtle, by the way, shows up around the 6:45 mark so I’ve set the video to start at 6min30sec:
What’s funniest to me about the start of that video is how oblivious everyone around them is with regard to what’s happening. Hawaiian native Koa Rothman is a bona fide celebrity on the Hawaiian surfing scene but Waikiki Beach is a spot for beginner surfers and tourists.
If he paddled out elsewhere in Honolulu he might get mobbed by teens trying to meet one of their heroes. Case in point, this recent North Shore sesh with a large crowd. It reminds me of several years ago when I got a surfing lesson from Greg Long, one of the greatest big wave surfers of all-time, and we were at a crowded beach where he didn’t get recognized by anyone other than two teens.
I happened to be looking over when they recognized him. One’s jaw dropped and he tapped his buddy like ‘dude, LOOK who it is.’ They were stunned that Greg Long would be at this tiny state park beach in San Clemente with knee-high waves. Only in this video, nobody at all seemed to grasp that it was Koa Rothman out there because it was all tourists on the beach and in the water. That sea turtle though, that might have been a ‘real recognizes real’ moment.
Should you be looking for his girlfriend on Instagram you can find Lydia Free here:
She can also be found on YouTube where she shares videos of her life as a model in Hawaii:
But make sure to smash that ‘subscribe’ button first on Koa Rothman’s YouTube channel where he’s closing in on 200K subscribers.