While promoting her new memoir, ‘Coming Home,’ WNBA star Brittney Griner reveals that she gave her wife a chance to divorce her after receiving a nine-year prison sentence in Russia; which arrived before Griner was released in a prison exchange in December 2022.
After being handed down her nine-year prison sentence for possession of cannabis oil, Brittney Griner, 33, says she feared that her wife, lawyer Cherelle Griner, would want to divorce her. In her new memoir, ‘Coming Home,’ Griner not only details the moments leading up to her sentencing, and after, but also speaks on what it was like in a Russian labor camp and more.
Although she received tremendous support from her lawyer wife, Phoenix Mercury star Brittney Griner had several fears that she wouldn’t have a wife to come home to after receiving and completing a nine-year prison sentence in Russia.
Before Griner knew she would be released in a December 2022 prisoner swap, she had already imagined that while behind bars she would lose opportunities in her career and also with her wife, whom she affectionately refers to as “Relle.” Knowing she was up against a nine-year prison sentence — which could potentially end up being 10 to allow for paperwork filing and other unforeseen issues — Griner feared that Relle would have wanted to end her marriage to the WNBA star.
In an excerpt of Griner’s new memoir, exclusively shared by PEOPLE, she said, “I might never see my parents again, and especially Pops [Griner’s father Ray] with his health issues. My basketball career would be over. I’d be in my early forties and out of shape and would have to find a new way to provide for my wife. And Relle. She assured me she’d wait, but ten years was ridiculous.”
Brittney Griner’s wife Cherelle, whom she married in 2019 and is expecting a child with, due in July, worked endlessly to see the release of her wife, from the day that she was detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport to her getting released in a prisoner swap signed off by President Joe Biden.
Despite all of Cherelle’s lobbying, commitment, and constant reassurance, Brittney Griner admittedly still had crippling fears that she would find herself divorced and alone in a Russian prison. Speaking with PEOPLE about her memoir, she said, “I went through so many emotions being locked up, and just thinking about nine years. We planned on having kids and doing all these amazing things together, and now I’m thinking, ‘Is that going to happen? How can I ask her to wait?’”
Even with a guilty verdict and a nine-year sentence, Brittney Griner said that losing her soulmate was “the real nightmare” in this situation. However, she admitted that she gave her wife the opportunity to move on with her life, separately. She said, “I gave her an out. But, she was basically like, ‘What? Stop it. Don’t you ever say that.'”
Griner explained, “It was just emotion. I got scared for a minute. When you’re in that predicament, the first thing that comes to mind is not good. You see women get those [goodbye] letters [in prison] and break down in tears.”
Griner, who wasn’t allowed to put up photos on the wall of her prison cell, said she would stick pitches of her wife on the side of a metal dresser beside her bed. She said, “I’d lay there and look at her, talk to her as if she was sitting there. I’d reread her letters. [That love] got me through.”
The WNBA star continued to applaud her wife’s private support and public advocacy, stating, “She is not a spotlight person, she is not [comfortable with] the media. She tries to run from it. For her to do all she did, it showed me even more how much she really loves me.”
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