WNBA star Brittney Griner is getting divorced from wife Cherelle

Brian Niemietz, New York Daily News on Jul 31, 2026

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WNBA star Brittney Griner and her wife Cherelle Griner are ending their eight-year marriage.

The Connecticut Sun center, who spent four months in a Russian prison on a drug offense in 2022, reportedly filed for divorce from her lawyer spouse Thursday, according to Georgia court records obtained by People.

Those paper filed in Fulton County state that Britney, 35, and Cheryl, 33, separated last week and that their union is “irretrievably broken.”

Cherrelle was Brittney’s biggest cheerleader when the 6-foot 9-inch baller was taken into custody at the Sheremetyevo International Airport, which serves Moscow, for possessing cannabis vaporizer cartridges containing a small amount of hash oil.

“She’s a political pawn,” Cherrelle told ABC News program “Good Morning America” after Brittney was detained.

Her arrest occurred shortly before the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. That Feb. 2022 attack damaged Russia’s diplomatic relations with The West.

Cherrelle expressed concern about how a brutal incarceration in Russia might change Brittney.

“At this point I don’t even know who I’m getting back once she comes back,” she told “Good Morning America.”

The Biden administration struck a one-for-one deal with the Kremlin to swap Griner for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout in December 2022.

The Griners welcomed a son named Bash in July 2024. The divorce filing in Georgia calls for joint custody of the couple’s boy, now two years old.

Brittney is the league’s all-time leader in blocked shots. She won a 2014 championship with the Phoenix Mercury. The Texas native was a standout student-athlete at Baylor University, where she met her future wife.

In April of this year, The Sun signed the three-time Olympic gold medalist to a one-year deal reportedly worth seven figures.