Shawn Johson East Strengthens Her Marriage With These Faith Habits

Published: July 9, 2024

Shawn Johson East Strengthens Her Marriage With These Faith Habits

By Movieguide® Contributor

Olympian Shawn Johnson East and husband Andrew East recently shared the ways they incorporate faith into their daily lives.

“I think the best way you brought faith into our marriage — to start, we did daily devotionals,” Shawn said in an episode of the pair’s “Couple Things” podcast. “Like, the Bible felt a little too intimate to start with, so we started with devotionals.”

Andrew added, “We read Tim Keller’s Meaning of Marriage devotional and Proverbs devotional. We each read one, and it takes, what? Five minutes total? And we do it over coffee, and it’s a great way to start the day.”

The couple also spoke about the importance of creating daily habits, especially when it comes to faith.

“Something else…we do always is pray before dinner, pray before meals,” Shawn shared. “We always pray before our meals, even with company, so if we have 100 people over, you better believe we’re getting in a big circle and we’re doing a prayer before dinner.”

She added, “It helps strengthen your marriage, in the sense of you’re on the same page.”

The couple are currently preparing to travel to Paris for this year’s Olympic games. Shawn, who took home one gold and three silver medals at 2008’s Olympics, will serve as a correspondent for Yahoo.

“I’m going back with my husband and kids, and it feels so much better — like this is better than any gold medal,” Shawn told Parents.com. “I think there is something really special about the Olympics that are so unique, and they’re so grand. It was such a big pivotal part of my life that my husband didn’t get to experience. To be able to kind of share that with him feels special. And being able to share that part of my life with my kids a little bit seems pretty cool.”

Movieguide® previously reported on Shawn’s upcoming work covering this year’s gymnastics events:

The 2024 Paris Olympics are approaching quickly, and many sports and news outlets are figuring out how to compete with NBC, the “exclusive rights partner” in the U.S.

Yahoo Sports is hoping their star-studded line-up full of former Olympians will draw viewers.

Per The Hollywood Reporter, “The sports platform has hired seven-time Olympic gold medalist Allyson Felix, who will provide coverage and analysis of track and field events; three-time gold medalist Kerri Walsh Jennings, who will cover beach volleyball; five-time gold medalist Missy Franklinand silver medalist Katie Hoff, who will provide coverage of swimming events; and gold medalist Shawn Johnson East, who will cover gymnastics events for Yahoo.”

Yahoo Sports chief, Ryan Spoon, sat down with The Hollywood Reporter to discuss what his company was looking for.

“This is going to sound stupidly obvious, but you start with what matters to fans,” he said. “These are the top of the list in terms of skill, personality, results, knowledge, interest. And the other interesting part that I think is really important here is they’re all ambassadors of their sports.”

“They’ve all done this at the highest level with absolute success, I think they are all multi-time Olympians, so what’s it mean to do that abroad? What’s it mean on these different scales and these different personalities?” he continued. “And we got lucky because we didn’t have to go down the list — these are folks who are for any fan of these sports, they’d be the top names you can help with.”

Shawn and Andrew already share three kids — Drew, 4, Jett, 2, and Barrett, 7 months — but the couple are considering adding another member to the family.

“I would love to adopt if we want to continue growing our family,” Shawn told PEOPLE. “I do feel like we are a family that would love to do that. I don’t know if our family’s done growing, but I am pretty sure I’m done having kids.”