We're holding on tight

long - awaited reunion “Overwhelmingly happy” is how Cherelle Griner (holding Brittney after she got off a plane, far left, from Russia) felt about having her wife return. “And chilled.”

- Alicia dennis

Brittney Griner, 32, a WNBA All-Star, was taken into custody by Russian officials for carrying a vape pen containing hash oil. The Phoenix Mercury center had been playing for the Russian Premier League basketball team UMMC Ekaterinburg during her off-season when she was stopped at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport, charged with smuggling illegal drugs, tried and then sentenced to nine years in a Russian prison colony. “It was almost as if somebody just punched you in the stomach and you inhaled,” Cherelle says of the shock. “You never get to breathe out.”

In those 10 months Cherelle, 30, finished law school, pleaded publicly and in private prayers for her wife’s release, tried to sleep at night and then got up in the morning to start all over again, never knowing Brittney’s fate. “I was hopeless a lot of days,” Cherelle admits. “You try and stay grounded, but I’m human. Still, I would never completely give up hope on my wife’s life.”

It wasn’t until Cherelle entered the Oval Office on Dec. 8 and heard—along with the rest of the world—President Biden announce that Brittney had boarded a plane out of Russia and was heading home to the U.S. that she felt the pressure begin to lift. “I had thought about that moment a thousand times, and I thought I would be full of tears,” she says. “But I was overwhelmingly happy. It was the first time I was able to finally exhale, and I’m like, ‘Oh, thank God, this is such a great day.’”