By India McCarty
Shawn Johnson and Andrew East say there’s beauty in all of us.
“I think of the phrase: ‘To know is to love,’” East, a former NFL player, said during an episode of the pair’s “Couple Things” podcast. “If you’re getting to know someone so well, you’re going to [find that] there’s beauty in all of us.”
He continued, “If you got to know someone else in a deep way, you’d be like, ‘Oh, I love this [person]. They’re made in God’s image.’ We all are. There’s so many beautiful traits.”
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The couple recently spoke at the Women Lead Chance Conference, and sat down for an interview with Iowa’s KCRG to talk about their upcoming book, The Courage to Commit: Embrace the Radical Power of Sticking with Something.
“We feel like we live in a culture right now that is a ‘swipe culture.’ The grass is greener right next door, always, and you’re never satisfied,” Johnson, a former Olympic gymnast, explained. “So we’re trying to preach a little wisdom at 34 and saying, ‘It’s actually pretty cool to stick with something and work hard for it.’”
East added, “We’ve experienced that with our athletics, our marriage, parenting, business — just, like, the maintenance costs are less than start-up costs if you go somewhere else.”
“It’s truly just such a humbling thing for us to be able to come on here and say we just constantly want to try to get better, and we want to learn, and we want to honor each other and have never given up,” Johnson said in an interview with Nashville Lifestyles.
It’s something the couple have spoken about often; in a 2025 episode of their “Couple Things” podcast, Johnson shared, “I feel like the world tries to paint a picture of marriage as if it’s not perfect, it’s not right, and you shouldn’t stay. I have found in our marriage that the most fruitful parts of our life and of our relationship have come from really, really hard things that are not by any means perfect. And the more you kind of fight through that kind of stuff, the deeper and more fruitful your marriage is, and I think we just want to showcase that.”
The couple shared a joint statement with PEOPLE about The Courage to Commit earlier this year — “So often commitment is portrayed as a trap in today’s society, and we want to offer a different perspective that commitment can actually be so freeing and worthwhile, whether that’s commitment to a partner, a job or a hobby.”
“Writing this book together has been such a labor of love, and we are so excited to share it with the world,” they finished.
The Courage to Commit: Embrace the Radical Power of Sticking with Something hits bookstores June 9.
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