Who is Jrue Holiday's wife Lauren Cheney? College sweethearts battled a brain tumor and won
The Milwaukee Bucks are going up against the Phoenix Suns on July 20 in the NBA Finals Game 6 at Fiserv Forum. No matter who wins, it will be an unparalleled experience for all of them since players on both teams, except for Suns forward Jae Crowder, have never played in the NBA Finals before. This is the first time in 50 years that no players in the Finals have won a championship prior to this and the Bucks will be looking to end the 5 decade drought by taking the win which last belonged to their team in 1971 opposite the Baltimore Bullets.
Center Giannis Antetokuonmpo and point guard Jrue Holiday's fabulous partnership in Game 5 which had a star-studded audience, resulted in the team's 3-2 lead ahead of Game 6 in Milwaukee. If the Bucks can get one more win, they will have had captured their first NBA championship since 1971. Holiday is currently playing in his 11th NBA Season since first being drafted in 2009. A lot has been spoken and written about his professional achievements and if you want to read about his stats and career projections, all of it can be accessed here. Continue reading below to know more about how love blossomed between him and Lauren Cheney who he has been married to for eight years after dating since his UCLA days.
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Who is Jrue Holiday's wife Lauren?
Lauren Holiday, née Cheney is a former professional soccer player who played as the midfielder and forward for the US Women's national soccer team between 2007 to 2015. In 2015, she decided to start a family with Jrue. The FIFA Women's World Cup champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist met Jrue at UCLA where Jrue joined the Bruins' basketball team and Lauren was a star forward in the soccer team. The standout athletes began dating after a short while of being just friends and married each other on July 7, 2013.
"Being engaged has been awesome. Obviously, planning a wedding is not quite my thing, but knowing that I'm going to be with him for the rest of my life has been quite a cool feeling," Lauren once said to an outlet in January 2013, a year after being engaged to Jrue. In 2014, Lauren was named MVP of the National Women's Soccer League and the US Soccer Federation honored her as its Female Athlete of the year. She was at the heights of her career and enjoyed incredible popularity, her Twitter following exceeding that of Jrue's at the time. However, she decided to bid goodbye to her highly successful career in 2015 to start a family of her own. Everything was going well till she started experiencing excruciating headaches in July 2016 while being seven months pregnant with her baby girl. A scan revealed a benign tumor on the right side of her brain near her orbital socket which was "devastating" for Jrue.
However, the silver lining was the tumor was no threat to their unborn daughter and doctors said it could wait until Lauren delivered. This also meant her recovery would be during the NBA regular season and Jrue didn't think twice about missing it altogether to care for Lauren. "My family comes before basketball," the then-26-year-old said. "I'm obviously blessed to play this game and be in the position I am in, but my wife is the most important thing in the world to me. She comes before anything else," he added.
Lauren went ahead to get the surgery and stayed away from the public glare for a long period with Jrue updating everyone about her progress during the time. But in 2017, she bounced back ready to tell her story and she took to her Instagram to share what she went through in recovery. "I have been hiding myself from a camera for the past 7 months," she wrote in the caption. "I didn't want anyone to see my paralyzed face, my eye that is now crossed, the bald spots from radiation & my half-shaved head. Granted you can't see any of those things in this picture, just a patch…it's a huge step," read an excerpt from the lengthy post.
Also keeping it real about her suffering, Lauren shared, "I have never quite known suffering like I experienced the last 6 months. I can remember countless nights repeating 'there may be pain in the night but joy comes in the morning.' I remember half believing it and half still in disbelief that this was my life. I memorized scripture and some days my faith felt unshakable and others I was scared to death. Every time I see this smile I'm reminded that joy does come in the morning. Maybe not the next day, maybe not even the next month but it comes. I can't imagine what heaven will be like if this is the joy I get to experience on earth. Psalm 30:5."