Of all the famous NBA couples out there, I’m not sure any of them feels as intertwined and on the same page as Dwyane Wade and Gabrielle Union. The pair have been married since 2014 and have gone through it all together, from navigating the end of Wade’s basketball career to winning custody of Wade’s two kids from his previous marriage and having one of their own. They’ve been active philanthropically and in fighting for LGBTQ+ causes and have even helped each other’s careers along the way.
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Union appeared on the She’s So Lucky podcast last month and spoke about one way in which Wade has helped her professionally—his unique perspective on a book she was reading gave her the confidence to turn it into a movie.
As Union tells it, she was enjoying the book The Idea of You by her friend Robinne Lee, whom she previously collaborated with on the 2003 movie Deliver Us From Eva, but she knew that it could be a movie when Wade read it and saw it in a completely different way than she did.
“From there, I was like, ‘This is a movie.’ If different people can walk away, because I thought there was one way to look at this book, but I realized if men and women are looking at this differently, age groups are looking at this differently, this is a movie.”
Wade is nine years younger than Union and very famous in his own right, so their story shares similarities with The Idea of You, which is a rom-com about a relationship between a woman and a younger pop music star.
Union decided to produce the movie, and it’s since become one of the biggest original movies that Amazon Prime has ever released.
Gabrielle Union has also helped Dwyane Wade in his career
Wade has developed a thriving podcasting career since his playing days ended, but he hadn’t really dipped his toes into the play-by-play game until the 2024 Paris Olympics. Luckily for him, he had Union, who provided him with real-time feedback by texting him during the games he was announcing.
In an appearance on Today this past summer, Wade said, “She texts me during halftime. I get to look at my phone and be like, certain things she’s like, ‘Ooh, OK, that was good’ or ‘Ah, that may be a little problematic.’ I get real-time feedback.”
By all indications, Wade and Union have been good for each other’s careers, and their marriage appears to be one of the strongest in both the sports and entertainment worlds.
