WNBA star Brittney Griner has filed to end her eight-year marriage to Cherelle Griner, the lawyer who became a national figure while campaigning to bring Brittney home from a Russian prison.
Griner, the 35-year-old Connecticut Sun center, filed the divorce petition Thursday in Fulton County, Georgia, calling the marriage "irretrievably broken," the New York Post reported. The filing lists July 24 as the couple's date of separation and asks for joint legal custody of their 2-year-old son, Bash, who was born in July 2024.
Cherelle Griner, 33, has not publicly responded to the filing. Court records do not indicate whether she plans to contest the divorce or the custody arrangement.
Brittney and Cherelle met as students at Baylor University, where Brittney led the Bears to the 2012 NCAA national championship and a perfect 40-0 season. They married in June 2018.
Four years later, the marriage faced a crisis few couples could imagine. Russian officials detained Brittney in February 2022 after authorities said she was carrying a vape pen containing hash oil. She was found guilty on drug-related charges and handed a nine-year sentence.
During the roughly 10 months Brittney spent in Russian custody, Cherelle became the most visible advocate for her release, pressing the Biden administration publicly and privately. The effort culminated in December 2022, when the U.S. government secured Brittney's freedom through a prisoner swap that sent convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout back to Moscow.
The swap drew sharp criticism from conservatives who argued the deal traded a dangerous arms trafficker for an athlete detained on drug charges, a lopsided exchange that rewarded hostage-taking. But for the Griner family, it meant reunion. That reunion, it now appears, did not hold.
The couple welcomed Bash less than two years after Brittney's return. Breitbart confirmed the same core details of the filing: an eight-year marriage ending with a custody request and a separation date of July 24.
This is not Brittney Griner's first divorce. In 2015, she married former WNBA player Glory Johnson, then filed for an annulment just 28 days later. Johnson gave birth to twin daughters, Ava Simone and Solei Diem, in October 2015. By April 2016, a court had ordered Griner to pay child support to Johnson.
The pattern is worth noting. Two marriages, two endings, the first measured in days, the second in years. The second was far more public, shaped by an international incident that turned both women into household names and entangled U.S. foreign policy in a personal story.
The divorce filing adds another chapter to a saga that has kept Griner in headlines far beyond the basketball court.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution first reported the filing, and the details have since been confirmed through Fulton County court records. The filing cites no specific cause beyond the "irretrievably broken" language standard in Georgia divorce petitions.
Court records released so far do not address financial terms, no mention of alimony, property division, or the specifics of physical custody and visitation for Bash. Whether Cherelle Griner will seek primary custody or agree to the joint arrangement Brittney has proposed remains unknown.
The WNBA, meanwhile, continues to navigate its own growing pains as a league caught between political identity and athletic competition. ESPN's recent WNBA documentary drew criticism for sidelining the league's biggest draw, Caitlin Clark, and the league's relationship with its own stars remains a subject of debate.
Griner's personal life has been inseparable from that broader conversation. Her detention in Russia became a political flashpoint. Her release became a foreign-policy debate. Her return to the court became a media event. Now her divorce will generate another round of coverage, coverage that will inevitably circle back to the prisoner swap and the question of whether the price paid for her freedom was worth it.
For Cherelle Griner, who spent nearly a year pleading on cable news for her wife's return, the filing is a quiet ending to a very loud story. She has not spoken publicly, and no statement from her legal team has surfaced.
Clark's own experience navigating the league's spotlight, including a moment at All-Star weekend when Barack Obama told her to ignore the "nonsense", underscores how tangled the WNBA has become with politics and celebrity.
Griner's divorce won't change any of that. But it does close the book on a marriage that became, for better or worse, a symbol of something much larger than two people.
When the government trades an arms dealer for an athlete, the least you'd hope for is a happy ending. The Griners didn't get one.
