Cherelle Griner on Wife Brittney’s Emotional Homecoming After Release from Russia: ‘We’re Holding on Tight’

For 294 days, Cherelle Griner felt as if she were holding her breath, always in a perpetual state of waiting, clinging to hope even when hope seemed pointless, she told PEOPLE.

Counting the days — and sometimes the hours and minutes — began early this year for Cherelle, on Feb. 17, when her wife of three years 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 offseason 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,” says Cherelle 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.