NASCAR driver Natalie Decker has drawn fresh attention after describing on a podcast how she first met her future husband, fellow racer Derek Lemke, and the direct message she says he later sent her while she was still a teenager. Decker, 28, told the “Speedway Sessions” podcast that she first saw Lemke at a track…
Decker, 28, told the “Speedway Sessions” podcast that she first saw Lemke at a track check-in line when she was 14 and he was 18, and that she immediately took notice of him. She recalled him wearing “a baby blue Bauer hat” backwards and said she turned to her father and asked: “Do you think that’s a hockey player AND a race car driver? Cause if that’s the case, I will marry that guy.”
In the same account, Decker said her father dismissed the comment at the time, but she described becoming “obsessed” with Lemke in the years that followed, calling him “the coolest guy,” while adding that she was “just like this little girl to him at this point.”
Decker told the podcast that as they continued to cross paths around racing, Lemke was older, had finished high school and had a girlfriend, and she framed their early interactions as intermittent meetings at events. She said that later, after a racing-season Oktoberfest gathering, Lemke sent her a message on Instagram. Decker quoted the message as: “Call me when you’re 18.” She said she replied: “Bet, I will,” and added on the podcast that she believed he still had a girlfriend at the time he sent it.
Decker said Lemke later messaged her after she turned 18, and she responded. During the conversation, podcast host Matt Tifft reacted to her description by asking: “Is that grooming? I feel like that’s grooming.” Decker told the show she and Lemke had “never talked about it,” but said they have been in contact since she responded to him after turning 18.
The remarks have circulated widely online in the days since the episode aired, sparking debate among motorsport fans about the appropriateness of an older teen telling a younger teen to get in touch once she became an adult. A Yahoo Sports article described fans accusing Lemke of grooming as the clip spread on social media.
Decker and Lemke are both involved in US stock-car racing. Decker, from Eagle River, Wisconsin, has raced in NASCAR national-series competition and the ARCA Menards Series, and has been a regular presence in the sport’s lower divisions while also working with a range of teams and sponsors. Her racing biography and career results list starts in regional and local racing, before moving through NASCAR and ARCA appearances, including starts in the Truck Series.
The story Decker told hinges on her memory of meeting Lemke at “Elko,” a reference commonly associated with Elko Speedway, a short oval in Elko New Market, Minnesota, that has long hosted regional stock-car racing.
Decker’s account on the podcast placed their first encounter at her future husband’s “home track,” and she presented the moment as an early spark that later became a relationship once she was older. In the LADbible report, Decker is quoted saying she eventually married the man she noticed at 14 and later had their first child together.
The online reaction has included a split between those who view the “call me when you’re 18” message as inherently predatory, and others who argue that a four-year gap between teenagers is different from a much larger age difference later in life. Some of that discussion has centred on the point that Decker was 14 when she first met Lemke and 18 when she says their contact became romantic, with commenters disputing whether the message itself should be understood as grooming or as a crude attempt to avoid crossing legal and ethical lines until she was an adult.