Iowa’s Aaron Graves looks forward to getting married off the field, growing as leader on the field

IOWA CITY — Aaron Graves’ first big Saturday of 2025 will be more than 200 miles away from Kinnick Stadium and in a venue far more romantic than a football stadium.

Graves will marry former Hawkeye soccer player Aubrey Hahn on Saturday three years after first meeting her in Petersen Hall in the summer ahead of their freshmen years.

“When you know, you know,” said Graves, who got engaged last May. “There’s no point in me waiting. After we had been dating for like a year-and-a-half, I knew I was going to marry her.”

The 6-foot-4 Iowa defensive tackle won’t be the only newlywed in the football facility either. Fellow defensive lineman Ethan Hurkett is getting married the following weekend, and center Logan Jones is getting married the weekend after that.

“Logan Lee got married the summer of my first year, so he kind of set the precedent, I think, for the rest of us,” Graves said.

Rest assured, wedding planning does not seem to be taking away from Graves, Hurkett and Jones’ pursuits in Iowa’s Hansen Football Performance Center.

“I don’t think any of us have been really involved in that too much, to be honest,” Graves said with a laugh. “You’d have to ask our fiances.”

While not focused on wedding planning, the all-Big Ten honorable mention has his eye on further football development ahead of his fourth and final season with the Hawkeyes.

“There’s always room for improvement,” said Graves, who has appeared in 39 games in the first three seasons of his Iowa career. “Doesn’t matter how many games you played in, how much experience you have.”

A major aspect of Graves’ desired development is as a leader. That is partly by necessity, too, after his fellow starting defensive tackle Yahya Black graduated and was the Pittsburgh Steelers’ fifth-round selection in the 2025 NFL draft.

“If somebody was messing up, (Black) would yell at them and let them know,” Graves said. “So this year, that’s something that I’m trying to improve on — where if I see somebody not doing what they’re supposed to or just not doing stuff at the level that we want, get on them verbally compared to just being a show-by-example.”

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After contributing significantly as a reserve in his first two years on campus, Graves started all 13 games in 2024 and thrived in the expanded role.

He had eight tackles for loss, six sacks and three forced fumbles in 2024. Hurkett was the only Hawkeye with more sacks (6.5) and tackles for loss (11.5) in 2024. That was all while he and Black received plenty of attention from opposing offensive lines.

“We were both getting double-teamed a bunch last year in the run game,” Graves said. “Whatever we can do to help out the backers make plays, and the tackles and sacks and all that will come if we just stick to it.”

Graves’ pass-rushing success has especially been an area of growth since arriving in 2022 as the MaxPreps Male National Athlete of the Year.

“Coming from a tiny school, we didn’t really pass-rush a lot,” Graves said. “I was a zero tech my senior year, getting triple-teamed every time by both the guards and the center. … From freshman year to now, that’s an area where I’ve grown a lot.”

A former Southeast Valley prep from Dayton, Graves heard “a little bit” of NFL feedback from his agent after his junior season, but his focus remained squarely on playing one more year of college football.

“It wasn’t worth it at all to try and leave after three years, and I want to play my fourth year here, too,” Graves said. “There’s still a lot of things that are left on the table here that I want to accomplish, so it made the decision really easy for me.”

Graves’ academic performance at Iowa might be even more impressive than his athletic performance.

He arrived as a freshman in 2022 already with an associate degree from Iowa Central Community College and finished his bachelor’s degree in exercise science last spring. Now, he has one semester to go before completing his master’s degree in sports and recreation management.

Yes, that means he will have an associate degree, bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in fewer than four full years on a college campus. (He does not seem interested in pursuing a doctorate degree.)

“I think I’m getting ready to be done with school,” Graves said. “It’s starting to not be as interesting as it once was.”

Before looking too far ahead on the 2025 calendar, though, Graves and Hahn will take a flight on Sunday to St. Lucia in the Caribbean for their honeymoon. That conveniently lines up with Iowa’s break from summer workouts during Fourth of July week.

“I might need to find a gym there or a beach or something,” Graves said. “But everybody will be off that week, so just figure out something to do so I don’t come back super out of shape. … It’s too much good food.”

As for the wedding itself, Graves did not seem to have too many nerves three days ahead of his big Saturday.

“When you’re used to playing in front of 70,000 people, can’t be too bad with only 175, right?” Graves said Wednesday morning. “And they’re all people you know, so hopefully I don’t get too nervous.”

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