Media reports indicate the parents never met Kekua.

Te'o was in Florida training for the NFL Scouting Combine, where draft prospects showcase their abilities for teams. He didn't meet with reporters or answer phone calls to his room on Thursday.

He tried to clear things up with a statement Wednesday saying he "developed an emotional relationship with a woman I met online."

"We maintained what I thought to be an authentic relationship by communicating frequently online and on the phone, and I grew to care deeply about her," he said in the statement.

"To realize that I was the victim of what was apparently someone's sick joke and constant lies was, and is, painful and humiliating," the statement continued. "It further pains me that the grief I felt and the sympathies expressed to me at the time of my grandmother's death in September were in any way deepened by what I believed to be another significant loss in my life."