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 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.
For Decker, the renewed attention comes at a time when she has been balancing racing with family life. She has spoken publicly in recent years about the challenges of carving out a career in a sport where sponsorship and seat time can be difficult to secure, particularly for drivers without long-term backing, while also trying to remain visible in the competitive ladder system that funnels racers from local tracks into national series.
Neither Decker nor Lemke has publicly addressed the backlash in the reporting reviewed for this article, beyond Decker’s remarks on the podcast clip as published by LADbible and repeated in other coverage. In that clip, she did not describe any sexual or physical relationship while she was underage, instead describing a message she says she received as a teen and her decision to respond once she was 18.
The episode has also reignited broader scrutiny of the way drivers and public figures describe their personal lives in public forums, particularly when anecdotes touch on age and consent. In Decker’s case, the tone of her story, told as a recollection of how she met her husband, collided with the host’s on-air question about grooming and with the way the clip has been interpreted by audiences online.
Decker’s racing profile has historically attracted attention for reasons beyond the track, including the visibility that comes with being one of the more recognisable women to compete in NASCAR’s national divisions in recent years. Her supporters have often pointed to the barriers women face in motorsport, from sponsorship disparities to the difficulty of landing consistent rides, while critics have questioned her results and the frequency of her appearances at the higher levels of competition.
This time, however, the focus has been less on performance and more on personal history, and on the optics of a message framed around turning 18. For some fans, the detail that Decker says Lemke still had a girlfriend when he sent the message added to the discomfort, while others have argued the key question is what happened between the ages of 14 and 18 and whether there was any sustained, private relationship while she was underage. Decker’s public account, as published, describes continuing to see Lemke around racing and later beginning direct contact when she was legally an adult.
The controversy is likely to remain tied to the clip itself, which centres on a single line and its implication rather than a broader set of allegations. For Decker and Lemke, the immediate outcome has been an intense burst of attention, driven by a story Decker said out loud as part of a long-form interview but which has travelled far more widely as a short excerpt separated from the rest of the conversation.
