While taking up the seat as a co-host on Today with Jenna & Friends, retired basketball star Dwyane Wade admitted that he wasn’t really paying attention to what his wife Gabrielle Union was saying during their first date.
The Miami Heat legend and NBA champion explained why that was the case. “My wife’s so beautiful, and so when she was talking, I wasn’t really listening,” the 43-year-old said, per PEOPLE. “My apologies. I was just kind of looking at her eyes and her lips and all those things.”
Wade also shared other memories from their first date, stating that Union was “just so smart” and “intelligent.” “I was very attracted to the intelligence of her mind, but it was unfair because I already knew her as an actress,” he added.
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Union and Wade became romantically involved in 2009 before they married in 2014. Their first daughter, Kaavia, was born through a surrogate in 2018. Wade and his ex-wife Siohvaughn Funches share two children: Zaire, 23, and Zaya, 17, while he also has an 11-year-old son, Xavier, with Aja Metoyer.
Union and Wade’s relationship has, however, had its ups and downs. During a February appearance on Today with Jenna & Friends, Union, 52, revealed that Wade’s 2023 cancer diagnosis led to a “very hard” year in their marriage. She explained that confronting mortality in one’s early forties puts a significant strain on relationships.
“It was year nine of our marriage and … year nine was very hard,” the Think Like A Man star said. “When you mention year nine being hard, he hadn’t revealed his cancer diagnosis and his own cancer journey, so now we can put it in more context,” she added.
Wade had 40% of his kidney removed after doctors found a cancerous tumor, and as Union said, “obviously him getting that diagnosis was traumatic for him: Being faced with your own mortality in your early forties, and you’re like, ‘Am I going to be here to see my family? Who am I without this big life, and without this healthy body?’ “
She continued: “But you also don’t understand the journey and the toll that it takes on your marriage, on your family, on your kids.” Union said also Wade was “a little more hesitant to take us on that journey of healing.”
As Wade previously said on his The WY Network podcast, “As a man, you never want your family to see you weak … Don’t want to be perceived weak, don’t want to be seen in your weakest moments but I had to [be].”
Union elaborated on that point, saying, “That level of vulnerability, to go through removal of a good chunk of his kidney and the healing that involved, he needed us to be okay with his vulnerability but more than that, he needed to be okay with his vulnerability.”
“It was a challenge,” she said.
READ ALSO: Gabrielle Union on why she felt ‘entitled’ to cheat in her first marriage
