Brittney Griner’s wife talks her long-awaited homecoming: ‘I was able to finally exhale’

Brittney Griner’s wife Cherelle Griner is reflecting on the WNBA All-Star’s homecoming earlier this month, after she was released from roughly 10 months in Russian custody.

“I had thought about that moment a thousand times, and I thought I would be full of tears,” teacher-turned-lawyer Cherelle, 30, told People of President Biden announcing her wife was finally coming home.

Cherelle, who was in the Oval Office when the president announced the news, said it “was the first time I was able to finally exhale.”

Within hours, the couple were reunited in a San Antonio bunker, and “were both just instantly crying” when they saw each other.

Brittney was promptly evaluated by a medical team, after which she and Cherelle were finally allowed to touch one another.

“I couldn’t stop touching her face,” Cherelle recalled. “I was like, ‘Is this really you?’ It did not feel real. It was chilling — and warm. I was just holding on tight. I couldn’t let her go.”

Cherelle noted, the first night Brittney was home, they “didn’t sleep at all,” having “just talked all night long and all morning. And it was so good to be able to do it without three weeks in between the conversation, because for 10 months we were passing letters,” continued Cherelle.

Noting the couple is “embracing” the ability to share what they each went through during Brittney’s detainment, Cherelle said they are “taking it slow.”

“We are honoring the fact that I went through something that was really hard and difficult without BG’s awareness, and vice versa,” she said. “We’re definitely trying to figure out how we blend back as one.”

Brittney Griner, while playing for the Russian Premier League basketball team UMMC Ekaterinburg, was arrested in February for smuggling illegal drugs into the country. She was sentenced to 9 years in a Russian penal colony.

She has vowed to return to the WNBA for the 2023 season, playing for the Phoenix Mercury.