John Cena nearly fumbled a chance with his now-wife, Shay Shariatzadeh.
While a guest on The Howard Stern Show on Wednesday, February 21, the 46-year-old Freelance actor recalled meeting his Shariatzadeh on Super Bowl Sunday in 2019.
Cena was at a Canadian bar in Vancouver, British Columbia, with a friend, watching the New England Patriots square off against the Los Angeles Rams when Shariatzadeh walked in, making him do a double take and completely forget about the game.
“I wasn’t looking, but damn, man, it just found me,” Cena said of the unexpected moment.
He continued, “So we watched the game, and then the table sitting right across from us — this group of five people walked in. Man, I stopped watching the game. I didn’t even know it was over.”
The WWE star confessed he was too nervous to talk to Shariatzadeh, but one of her friends set things in motion when she asked for a photo with him.
“I was such a d–k, I was so bad,” Cena added. “Here I am — hell this was half a decade [ago] — I’m 40 and I’m too scared to approach this girl.”
Thankfully, their seemingly awkward interaction didn’t end there.
“So I got a picture with her, and then she brought by my wife-to-be over, we have our first fan photo, which we hang proudly where we hang our hats. It’s awesome,” Cena recalled.
He added that he refused to risk the chance of never seeing Shariatzadeh again and asked her for her phone number. Cena said he reached out to the engineer immediately, revealing the message he sent her via text when they left the bar.
“‘It was so nice to meet you, you’re beautiful, I’d like to get to know you more if you have any free time coming up I’ll make time for you.’ She’s like, ‘You want to go out this weekend?’ I said, ‘Sure,'” he explained.
The couple started dating about a year after he and his ex Nikki Bella called off their wedding.
Their whirlwind romance became a serious one when he proposed one year into their relationship.
He was filming The Suicide Squad at the time and asked to leave the set to prepare for his big moment. Afraid he’d mess it up, Cena said he skipped the grand gesture approach and asked her to marry him during a quiet Valentine’s Day celebration at their home in 2020.
“It was beautiful,” he said, adding, “and I had the ring in my pocket because I was afraid I’d lose it in my bag, by chance, and I [decided to] ask her right now. So I blew all the special plans and just said ‘Hey, there’s no better moment,’ because there wasn’t — it was so beautiful, still, we were both so open and it just happened right there.”
Still, Cena said he knew much sooner that Shariatzadeh was The One.
“I would have done it in three months,” he continued. “It might have been a little weird, yes. I don’t want to speak for her, but she didn’t say no when I asked.”
